


Canticle of Chaos

by beng



Series: Gods of Lowtown [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragon Age Fusion, Angst, Bisexual Loki (Marvel), Blood Magic (Dragon Age), Brainwashing, Casual Sex, Creeping Normality (Death by a Thousand Cuts), DubCon Drug Use, F/F, Faithful to the Qun Valkyrie, Fantastic Racism, Flogging, Loki is not a cinnamon roll in this ok, M/M, Mind Control, Qunari Culture, Self-Hatred, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, tags keep evolving, the Qun is complicated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2019-06-30 05:33:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15745281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beng/pseuds/beng
Summary: His life in ruin after the truth of his adoption comes out, Loki flees Asgard and sets himself on a dark and destructive path. What more does he need to break, within himself and in the world of Thedas, to find new truth and purpose?The Tevinters say there used to be an Old God of Freedom that got corrupted into the Dragon of Chaos. Can chaos be uncorrupted?The DA alternative to Loki's fall into the abyss and all the subsequent mess.





	1. Ferelden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is dark and ugly. Please heed the warning and the tags.   
> Additionally, there are occasional, non-graphic references to Loki being the result of rape, but there won't be any other sexual violence in this story.  
> Basically I just realized that all the horribleness living in my head as Loki's backstory from "Gods of Lowtown" needs to be put in writing, otherwise he seems uncharacteristically calm and mellow. So, this is how he got there.
> 
> If you don't know Dragon Age, I'm always happy to talk :)  
> And [here](https://bengalaas.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/Lokis-Thedas.png?w=739) is a map of Thedas, showing Loki's journey in chapters 1-7.

 

_"Those Dalish are no better than rats, Father!" Thor yelled, pacing the great hall of Lothering Castle. "They're dirty thieves and murderers, spreading disease among our people!"_

_"They keep to themselves and are just passing through!" Odin bellowed back at his golden son._

_"I can't believe you're just letting them! They have blood mages in their midst!"_

_Loki opened his mouth to add his own opinion of who cares what those knife-ears are up to in the eyes of the Maker. Odin beat him to it._

_"I know they're monsters, Thor!"_

_Loki closed his mouth._

_"Father, if you agree with me, then why..." Thor was so riled up he couldn't even formulate the question. "To the void with your precautions! I'll run them out myself, if I have to! Loki, you're coming with me."_

_"Thor, you know my decision, and you shall abide by it! If you raise your hand against the Dalish," Odin stood up from his throne, knuckles white around the golden sceptre-spear Gungnir. "If you raise your hand against them, then I have no son!"_

_Loki's satisfied smirk from seeing Thor brought down a peg died as his father's words sunk in. Something twisted in his gut, a deep-seated feeling of dread, a damning sense of truth. He frowned and stepped forward. He knew he wouldn't accept being shut up this time._

_"I hate to interrupt, but..."_

_Odin sagged back in his seat. "Loki, this does not concern you."_

_"Oh, but that was an interesting choice of words, Father. Am I not your son?"_

 

 

 

"No." 

Loki rides through the night as if pursued by an army of demons.

There are no moons tonight, and the Imperial Highway is a barely visible grey shape he follows in the darkness of the forest, wishing to be swallowed by the shadows, to disappear, to just un-exist, to  _stop being_.

"No." ~~Father's~~   _Odin's_ rejection — an obnoxious, incontestable truth — rattles in his mind, louder, louder,  _louder_ , to the beat of the hooves against the ancient brick road from Lothering.

No, you're not my son. No, you'll never inherit the teyrn's mantle, even if you learned to hide your blasphemous magic. No, you'll never be worthy.

Never _had_ been worthy of anything, and never will be! Never strong enough, fast enough, _good_ enough, not for the people of Asgard and not even for his own family.

He may have wondered what was wrong with him, had tried to fight the tide of prejudice against his magic, but now all the dots are connected, and now he knows all his efforts are, and have always been, for naught.

Now he knows, and it's a "No" that _nothing_ can ever change, that no ungodly amount of his diplomatic successes and brilliance, no amount of studies and knowledge and strategy, no amount of bruised knuckles from sword training, and sprained shoulders from wrestling, from trying to finally fucking _prove_ himself can change.

He is not his father's son, and his mother is not his mother.

No, it is not the sound of his heart breaking.

 

 

***

Autumn is in the air. The first fallen leaves shine silver on the dark surface of the road, turning in slow swirls with the night wind, as lost and tired as Loki.

He leaves his blood-bay stallion with a stable hand of a roadside inn, heavy limbs and a throbbing headache begging for dreamless sleep in whatever bed they would give him. Perhaps he can still make some sense of it all, after he sleeps off the edge of the heartache and the lie. Perhaps he can still forge a path forward, find strength to move past this most personal of betrayals.

Even in the warm and clean stable, the air smells of decay, of a long winter ahead. 

Loki watches in the quiet semi-darkness as the stable hand removes his horse's tack. He asks a few questions about the inn. A few minutes later, he takes the proffered saddle bags, slings them over his forearm. The vambrace presses uncomfortably against the elaborate black and green sleeve. It is the [wrong outfit](https://68.media.tumblr.com/bd79d8f5fcc39f6c278b75ae0a88812f/tumblr_inline_ootvvcq1Nk1te9tz7_500.gif) to wear beneath his armour, but Loki grimly thinks it's a wonder he had the presence of mind to put on his battle gear at all before leaving Lothering. He has managed to pack his helm too, some money and his daggers, a few spare shirts, and his emerald green cape.

Even with a lifetime of never-good-enough wounded pride on his shoulders, his step is light, his movements effortless with long years of weapons training as he turns to step out into the yard, where the bright entrance of the inn is beckoning. The lantern at the stable door reflects in Loki's inky black hair and green eyes, and, precipitating a final downfall, the stable hand falters at the sight, the brush in his hand frozen still above the stallion's shiny, dark back as he stutters:

"Ma-Maker's breath, sire, but you're the spitting image of Farbauti!"

 

***

Loki stares at the barely visible ceiling beams above the bed, the low mutter of voices downstairs mixing with his own tormented torrent of thoughts.

He cannot sleep. The new truth — his mother an elf, an abused orphan servant girl — has opened a dark abyss beneath his feet, and he's barely holding on by the tips of his fingers.

A pride demon brushes against his mind, promising revenge against all who have slighted and wronged him, all who have brought him this low. Other spirits, quieter and less intense, promise forgetfulness, to sleep and never wake, and never hurt this much again. He knows giving in to possession is not a solution — his mind shall be only his, and for all her lies, ~~Mother~~ _Frigga_  has taught him well. But it is tempting. Loki closes his eyes as he listens to their poisoned words. 

His entire life has been a farce.

He's not even a mistake, a result of drunken passion or of a betrothal gone wrong. No, Loki is the product of ~~unwanted attentions~~ ~~coerced love affair~~ of fucking  _rape_ , born of a knife-ear mother and a scumbag lordling from White River.

No, he is not even human; and the demons press up against the barriers in his head, excited at the churning black rage and despair that he can barely contain.

Where to now?

Only the muttering darkness of a strange room is his answer.

Damned since birth, Loki ~~Odinson~~ ~~Friggason~~ ~~Laufeyson~~  goes _down_.

 

***

The morning meets him on the road to White River, mud mixed with dried blood on the horse's hooves.

Loki's trusty Nevarran dagger has lost none of its sharpness after cutting out the talkative stable hand's tongue.

He's not exactly sure about his reasons ( ~~for telling the truth~~ ~~for knowing his mother~~ for potentially revealing the secret ~~to Father's~~ to Asgard's enemies?), but he certainly has found out all he needs to know about his birth mother.

The orange autumn sun rises at his back, and the blinding, snow-capped Frostback Mountains are growing larger in front of him as he rides, pursued by his demons.

And Loki laughs.

 

***

Loki has not slept for days, and the world has acquired diamond-sharp edges and crystalline clarity. He understands everything now.

Lord of Lies and Chaos they had dubbed him back in Asgard. It makes an infinite amount of sense now, being himself nothing but a lie. 

He's the halfbreed joke abandoned at birth and betrayed by those who claimed to love him.

Words, words, words!

Silvertongue they called him, and always thought he read too much, punished him when he talked out of turn — when he talked at all — and when he simply failed to be as great as Thor.

No, an adopted halfbreed whose only talent lies in the despicable, fearsome power of magic can never be as good as Odin's true-born golden son and heir.

No, his place was only ever to be in the shadows.

He wonders if Odin knew who Loki's father was, if he had a political gain in mind when he took in the sickly, dark-haired child left on Chantry doorstep in Lothering. (He would like to think Frigga didn't, that she didn't lie at least about  _this_  to him.)

Later, Loki smiles as he rides into the keep of the small borderline bannorn that guards a strategic pass over the Frostback Mountains, an important end of nowhere that everyone in Ferelden forgets about the moment the latest war with Orlais is over.

Dogs bark in their pens, and servants scatter before him like chicken when they see a mage's staff in his hand.

"Now witness me — your lord's despicable crime." His challenge echoes across the yard, dim afternoon sun glinting off his horned helm and shiny steel armour. "Witness, and  _kneel,_ and _beg for mercy_!"

Terrified, the people submit, and it brings Loki a dark sense of gratification, to see the household of his true father, the lord and commander of this god-forsaken bannorn, grovelling in the frozen mud.

"Isn't this what you wanted?" he chuckles. His blood-bay stallion dances impatiently on the spot. "Stability, structure, the established order — you value them so high you'd rather sacrifice your honour and friendship, you'd shut your eyes and minds to what's going on right in front of you. Then have it your way! Face the predictable consequence now, behold a monster born of a monster!"

Their bann raped one of the servants and then kicked her out on the snowy mountain paths, and none, _none_ of them had dared to even offer her shelter or a stale slice of bread.

Loki looks up just in time to see an ash-faced man in tired finery disappear from a window above.

The mage grins as he spells the entire household to sleep, not caring one whit where they bruise as they collapse.

He dismounts and stalks into the keep proper like he owns it.

 

***

In the morning, they find the lord of White River dead with his pants down in the privy, unseeing eyes bulging with unspoken sights and nightmares, his hair white as snow. In stiff fingers he is holding his hunting knife smeared with dried blood, and in the other hand he's clutching his own severed cock.There are no other signs of injury on his body. Bann Reginalda just barely manages to slam the door shut to spare her two small sons the grisly scene. She is shaken to the core, but already calculation and opportunities start misplacing the horror she feels. Already she is starting to forget details of her married life, and the boys are forgetting their father.

The grain that the late bann had just bought has grown mouldy. Milk has gone bad in the keep's kitchen, and the cook finds disgusting white worms in the stores of smoked ham and fish. Reginalda curses about the hard winter to come, and screams when, opening her late husband's treasure chest, she finds nothing but writhing snakes.

Nobody remembers the apostate in the horned helm and green cape.

Entropy magic has always been a special talent of Loki's.

 

***

Loki retches in the freshly fallen snow outside White River, until nothing comes up but bitter bile. His hands are shaking as he rubs some snow over his face, hoping the cold would chase away the dark circles swimming across his vision and the sick screams ringing in his ears, the gurgling last breath of a pretender god, gone mad with conjured, cruel visions and his own agony.

He needs to sleep, and eat, and rest. He needs to somehow stem the tide of darkness that is swallowing him whole.

But a part of him no longer cares if he lives or dies. So he climbs back in the saddle, slings his staff over his shoulder and turns his back on the mountains as he rides back down to the warm, decaying, fallen leaf smell of Ferelden. But not to Asgard, no. Loki picks a little-travelled route along the west shore of Lake Calenhad, and sets his sights on Highever, which he should reach in twenty days or so.

He doesn't care where he's going from there, he just wants to get far, far away from Asgard and from everyone he knows.

 

Alas, the Ben-Hassrath have a different proposal for him.

 


	2. Seheron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this AU, Frigga is the daughter of Ferelden's ambassador to Rivain. She's Fereldan, but she grew up abroad, in a society that's much more lax towards apostates and magic. Odin fell for her hard, and after marrying her had to deal with the surprising fact that her "witchy powers" are no rumour after all. It was a bumpy start.

 

 

Loki comes to in a dark cell smelling of wet straw and rat droppings. He's been stripped of his staff and armour, his daggers are gone. What must have been a rather long journey along Lake Calenhad and the eastern foothills of the Frostback Mountains is a dark void in his memory. He thinks he remembers being attacked at the Highever docks. There had been a soul-sucking magical blow that must be what a Templar's holy smite probably feels like. After that his memory is an empty dark pit again.

He's cuffed and loosely chained to a wall with some strange material that appears to block his magic. Loki stares towards his bruised wrists where he feels the heavy shackles, willing himself to see the runework, the colour of the metal, anything to tell him what material or enchantment it is and how this is even possible. But the darkness in his prison is absolute, and he achieves nothing.

He sits by the wall and pretends he might care.

No one comes.

 

*** 

Time passes, and still nothing happens, there's just the smell of mould and his own shit, because by now it must be the third day of his imprisonment. His throat is dry with thirst and useless swearing. Nobody has come asking him any questions or even just to gloat. Loki can only hypothesize what his captors' intentions are.

The blocked connection to the Fade _hurts_ in the marrow of his bones, in his soul and blood, but it seems to also block his nightmares. The demon voices are gone too, and Loki sits in absolute darkness and absolute silence, with only his thoughts for company.

Did they go after him that night, search for him? Did at least Frigga, at least even try? Did Thor?

Do they miss him one bit? Do they mourn?

Loki rests his head against the wall and laughs. He'd take his demon voices back in a heartbeat.

 

***

His stomach roils as he wakes from dreamless sleep. He's cold and numb, and lightheaded with hunger. He heaves bile on the floor.

Despite layers of leather and fabric, bloody cracks have developed on the skin of his wrists and forearms that have little to do with abrasion from the shackles.

The sensation of falling into an abyss has not left him, and he's not certain when it even began. Probably the inn. Probably even earlier, he just didn't recognize it. The silent darkness is disorienting. Does he still exist?

He tries to not think of Asgard.

Whenever the fog in his mind clears, Loki thinks how sweet was the smell of blood he spilled in White River, how satisfying the crunch of bones is going to be when he wrings the necks of his enemies, of everyone really, because if _anyone_ had been on his side, would he have ended up in this madness?

 

*** 

A long and convoluted theoretical framework for a new neck-wringing spell later, they finally come for him, and Loki finds he's been captured by [the Qunari](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lO7u8OutU_k/TfBW4HuVoQI/AAAAAAAAAIM/GPQoKV641ww/s1600/arishok.jpg), the race of horned, large ox-people from Par Vollen in the far north. They believe he's the teyrn's son. They want him to kill Odin, to sow discord and chaos in the largest teyrnir of Ferelden, to draw away King Cailan's attention from some attack the Qunari are planning to destabilize Orlais.

Of course, they don't tell him that much, but Loki's bound, not stupid.

He agrees, happily, and earns a kick in the ribs. They say it's not that simple. They think he's ridiculing them, and the truth that is the Qun.

"There is no truth left in the world," he tells them.

Their leader kicks Loki in the gut again, and he wheezes a laugh.

He has nothing more to give to them.

 

***

Still in chains, and now also gagged, they bring the mage to their forepost on the island of Seheron. Loki's sick and weak from long weeks in the hold, sick with the rolling sea and darkness, and the watery stew and soggy bread they have been feeding him. While on the dreadnaught, he's at least had plenty of time and sufficient lighting to study the lyrium engravings on his shackles. Loki has a few half-arsed theories on how they work, which he'd gladly develop further if only he could concentrate and  _think_. 

His eyes hurt in the bright tropical sun, and he stumbles as they disembark, a Qunari guard catching him and roughly shoving him forward again. The leader takes the chain and yanks Loki closer to him. Loki's a mage, his mind has been touched by demons. He's a _saarebas_ , a dangerous thing, to be kept chained and muzzled, lest his poisonous words spread corruption among the rest of the society.

This time, they strip him of his leather jerkin too and shackle him to a pole in the middle of a town square. 

The sun beats down on him mercilessly. The scabs on his forearms have opened again, and blood drips sluggishly down his elbows. Passing Qunaris and some elven and human converts who have accepted the Qun, stop and stare at him before continuing on their way with passive faces and efficient, quick steps. 

The bright square is paved with white marble tiles. The angles are sharp and precise, not a grass blade grows in the joints. The buildings around the square are equally precise and clean and perfect. 

Blinded by the whiteness, Loki closes his eyes and thinks of revenge.

 

***

It could be the midday of the following day, when a Qunari woman slaps Loki awake. She is tall, with steel grey skin and curved horns, and crimson ropes criss-cross her body in a strange knotwork of ornaments. She is Viddasala, she deals with dangerous magic, and it is her job to "break his loyalty".

"You can't break what's already broken," he tells her when she removes his gag, voice croaking and rusty from disuse.

She uncorks a bottle and presses it to his cracked lips, blessed, cool water flowing generously down his chin and down his parched throat. His unguarded relief is a mistake.

"Was it your one-eyed cripple of a father who abused your feeble trust?" Viddasala asks. "Or was it your Rivaini-bred bitch of a mother?"

At her mention of Frigga, something whimpers in the broken ruin of his heart.

Viddasala sees it in his eyes and grins. She circles him and tears open the back of his filthy shirt, leaving it hanging in tatters on his arms. Then, she steps back and unfurls a rawhide whip.

"You  _will_  submit,  _bas_. Time is on our side, and we are in no hurry."

The first lash is fire on his skin, and Loki cries out as he grips the chain holding him to the post. He's weak from the captivity and the sea voyage, and Viddasala is strong and committed.

With the second and third lash, the fire grows into a — four — blinding blaze of pain —  _five_  — he's not going to -  _six_  - give them -  _seven_  - the satisfaction -  _eight_  - to see him scream.

Not anymore -  _nine_  - not fucking ever.

 _Ten_  - how is this -  _eleven_  - even real?

After twelve, he grits his teeth and loses count.

 

***

He hangs half-delirious on the post, his back and shoulders a bloody, raw mess, and isn't it funny how none of  _this_ is an illusion? No, the ingenuity of the enchanted shackles negates all and any probabilities in the fabric of reality. They affirm the material world in nauseating, reinforced detail, deny the very  _possibility_ of it being anything else than it is. 

Isn't it funny how the pride he took from his studies has become an in-your-face denial of his ability to do anything about his state — his ruined back, his lyrium-poisoned arms, his churning stomach and shaking knees? He's so absurdly well-versed in the pointlessness of trying to work around it. No,  _this_ gets to be real, and it gets to  _stay_ real, while all his previous life has been nothing but a lie.

He rests his head on his arm and tries to get a hold of himself as his bloody shoulders shake with silent, manic laughter.

But what is pain, really?

 

***

The evening comes with a bucketload of cold water hitting him from behind, a rude awakening from the numbness he had eventually slipped into.

"You're  _filthy_." 

Loki growls and clenches his teeth when a cool, wet rag is run over his shoulders, roughly cleaning away the clotted blood. With the gag back in his mouth, he can't say much else.

"And idiotically tall."

A dark-skinned woman wearing a leather breastplate — apparently one of the human converts — walks around him and unlocks the chain from the post, watching in cool amusement as Loki crumples to the ground, tatters of his shirt pooling around his bound wrists.

"What's with the forearms? Ah. Must be the lyrium leaking from those shitty shackles."

Loki hangs his head as he focuses on trying to get up in a sitting position. The woman crouches in front of him, grabs him by the hair and forces him to look her in the face. She studies him with unnerving scrutiny, seemingly cataloging every bruise and wound she can see in the violet evening twilight.

"That's not pretty," is her verdict.

Loki just wants to lie down and sleep. He's too tired of hurting. He's too tired of this immutable reality.

Can he deny his own existence, the way this reality has denied him?

The woman stands up, mutters something about finding a healer and stalks away, leaving Loki huddled on the perfect marble tiles that slowly turn from lilac to indigo as the night settles over the town.

It's not like he's in any state to run, even if the square looks deceptively empty.

 

***

She returns with a lantern and a healer, and together they treat his back and shoulders, their touch not quite unkind, but firm and efficient. They've made him drink something for the pain, and his mind is muddled, but Loki thinks he counts thirty-six stitches.

The healer smears something itchy and stinky on Loki's wounds, then packs up and leaves after the woman has assured him she can take it from there.

"Viddasala believes you might be more cooperative now," the convert says as she tries to help him stand and fails. "If you're not, you'll be tied back to the post and flogged again. In time, you'll see the wisdom of the Qun."

She gives up and contemplates her options. Her sharp glance stops on an empty garbage cart parked on the far side of the square. She pulls it over and half-drags, half-dumps Loki into the cart.

Her home is a simple white structure close to the wall surrounding the town, and the dimensions make it clear it has been built for Qunari. Loki is given his own room, though there is no window and no door he could close. The low wicker bed is large enough. There's a thin straw mattress and a light blanket, but no pillow. The woman watches from the doorway as Loki stumbles in, sits on the bed. He considers refusing to comply any further, to hope against hope he could make an escape. But his vision is swimming, his thoughts hazy. He just needs this day to end.

She shows no intention of removing his gag or his shackles, and in the end Loki settles tentatively on his side, with his bandaged back to the wall. 

She disappears for a moment, and then returns with a heavy leather collar in her hand. Loki swallows thickly. She crouches down by the bed, and her strong, warm hands slip under his matted hair as she locks it around Loki's neck. 

There is a strange sense of finality in the air.

"I am your keeper now," she says. "Call me Arvaarad."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pic of [Viddasala](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2f/4d/b8/2f4db852fcf56b980fdafffa68dbc775.png), except let's assume that in 9:28 Dragon she has not yet taken to carrying a copy of the Tome of Koslun on her arm, because that's just ridiculous.


	3. Arvaarad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter starts us on the beautiful journey of grey morality mind-fuckery I'm not sure how to tag. Cognitive dissonance leading to Stockholm Syndrome perhaps. Unreliable narrator experiencing creeping normality. Not all of it is intentional manipulation, it's just... an entirely different culture and worldview I guess. If you think there are any tags missing, let me know and I'll add!

Loki sleeps for two days. When he wakes, he's turned on his stomach, his arms spread and loosely tied to the bedframe. Instead of the lyrium shackles, he can feel soft leather cuffs that simply keep him from turning on his back. The gag has been removed, and his forearms have been bandaged. A folded towel is put like an impromptu pillow under his head.

Arvaarad lounges on one side of the bed reading, a muscled arm lazily stretched atop the wicker headboard. She glances at him when he moves, reaches over and almost gently flicks the dirty locks from his eyes.

"Look who’s returned to the land of the living. High time,  _bas_."

Loki blinks slowly as she leaves the room, mind still foggy from sleep and whatever they had drugged him with. Maker, he's such a pathetic, weak piece of shit. But perhaps he can use it to his advantage. Pretend to be slower and stupider until an opportunity arises to exact his revenge. He'd make them squirm, he'd make them beg. Once he'd have regained some strength.

Arvaarad returns with a steaming bowl of soup and some flatbread. She crouches in Loki's eyeline and shows him a brass rod she unhooks from her belt.

"With this," she says, brown eyes boring seriously into Loki's, "I control you, I can instantly bind you. One stupid move,  _bas_ , and you're a paralyzed mess I put in that garbage cart and send back to Viddasala. Is that clear?"

Loki narrows his eyes at her but nods. His brain doesn't seem to have quite caught up with the fact he can talk now, but what he's sure of is that he wants to be nowhere near that Qunari again. Not unless he has all his power and his staff back.

"No magic in this house," Arvaarad continues, "or anywhere really, unless specifically sanctioned by me or any higher-up. Is  _that_ clear?"

Loki runs his tongue over his cracked lips and nods again.

"Good."

Without much further ado, Arvaarad unties his hands and watches him sit up. He's dizzy, and it takes him a few humiliating moments before his hands stop shaking enough to accept the soup bowl she's offering.

It's a simple chicken broth with some noodles and carrots floating in it. The flatbread tastes bland, but that is the least of his problems right now. After the weeks? months? of near starvation, Loki forces himself to eat slowly.

"You're not very talkative," Arvaarad observes, watching him from a chair by the doorway. "Fog tied your tongue?"

Loki glances up at the strange phrase, and this time he studies his keeper more carefully. She's sitting with her elbow propped on a small desk by her side, her head resting on her fist. Brown skin, dark, long hair tied in an intricate ponytail. Black leather outfit and armour. A tattoo half-hidden under her leather vambrace — a spear or a trident, rising above ancient battlements.

"You're a Valkyrie," he rasps, and Arvaarad almost falls from her chair.

"I'm not," she hisses. "Eat up and mind your own business!"

She  _is_ a Valkyrie. Or was. A dozen potential scenarios run through Loki's mind as he obediently slurps his soup.

He's heard of those fierce warriors even in Asgard: the last defenders of the native Seheron population, the best of the best among the guerilla Fog Warriors that have been giving both the Qunari and the Tevinter Imperium a run for their money for decades if not ages. And now she's converted to the Qun? Somehow, Loki doesn’t believe it.

Arvaarad paces the room until he finishes eating, then sits down in the chair again and leans forward.

"Now here are the ground rules,  _bas_."

 

***

Of course, he tries something stupid.

Catching a glance of gathering twilight in the kitchen window across the hall from his room when Arvaarad leaves with the empty dishes, Loki hauls himself from the bed, wincing at how stiff and sore everything feels. Almost stumbling, he stalks barefoot over the terracotta floor tiles and hides by the door, ties the leather cords hanging from his cuffs in a double knot. His heart beats so loud in his ears he wouldn’t be surprised she heard it on the other side of the house.

She’s coming down the corridor, not a sign of suspicion in her regular, soft footfalls, but of course Loki doesn’t stand a chance. He’s barely slipped the tie over her head when she elbows him hard in the solar plexus, knocking the wind from him. Next, they’re rolling on the floor fighting, an experienced warrior's calculated efficiency against a cornered mage’s creative desperation.

Loki stuns her, the blast throwing Arvaarad a few feet back, but his next spell misses, and his back is on fire, half-healed stitches torn, blood smeared on the uneven floor. Without his staff, he cannot focus his magic, and mind blasts are worthless without a backup. How he misses his knives, his trusty Nevarran knives…

When she lunges at him again, he slaps his hand on her forehead and improvises a nightmare spell, victorious for one infinite moment as her face freezes in horror, but then it backlashes, battering Loki in the chest with the force of an ocean wave, of dark and deep and implacable guilt and loss. Through her eyes, he sees pitch-dark jungle, and thick smoke, screams and shouts of a fight, cracking of spells and crumbling of walls and towers, blue flashes of lyrium and flames mirrored on a broadsword, betrayal and an all-encompassing rage, roaring fire and the rancid smell of death…

Arvaarad knees him in the stomach. Loki’s out of breath, black spots swimming across his vision when she finally pins him to the wall, panting and deadly, a long, curved dagger pressed to his throat.

“I knew you’d try,” she gasps. “So let’s get this lesson over with sooner rather than later.”

She grabs the device by her waist, and Loki cannot even scream as a torrent of lighting shoots through him, locking his jaws in a steely grip.

“That’s a warning,” Arvaarad spits and releases the switch. Loki whimpers underneath her, violent aftershocks racing through his limbs, short-circuiting his thoughts. “The full bind is the same, except you can’t move, can’t think, can’t cast, can’t breathe!”

“Is that something you want to experience?!” Something surfaces in her eyes, something breaks in her voice. “Is it,  _bas_?”

Loki exhales a shuddering sigh, and thankfully she takes it as a sufficient answer.

She climbs off him and stands up, dusts off her leather armour and then extends her hand.

“Get up. And don’t do that spell on me ever again.”

 

***

“I’m not stepping out as you wash,” Arvaarad states, and pours another bucket of water into the large wooden tub standing in the simply adorned washing room. Loki leans against the doorframe, pretending he doesn’t need it to stay upright. His back is bleeding again, dark drops running down his pants, leaving a depressing trail on the floor.

“I’m your  _arvaarad_ , I'm responsible for you,” she continues. “So you don’t get any privacy. Especially after what you just pulled. I won’t watch you in the privy, but that’s about it, and don't push it.”

"Arvaarad is not your name? A job title?" Loki asks, wincing at how his voice falters from disuse and the aftershocks of the control device.

"Yes."

"What is your name? And what is it you're calling me?"

" _Bas_? Means you're not a Qunari. Yet. Literally, it just means 'thing'."

He should have guessed. "And your name?"

"My name is Arvaarad. What matters under the Qun is what you do. That's who you are." She sets a cake of soap and a few towels on a shelf near the tub and turns to Loki. “Well? Get out of those rags!”

If Loki had the energy, he’d be seething. But he can barely stand, so he just flashes Arvaarad an icy glare and starts undressing, impotent rage burning in his throat.

If he uses magic without permission, he will be bound and shocked by the device built in his collar — that had been the main point of Arvaarad’s previous explanations before he had tried to kill her. If he's left for any significant time without her supervision, he'll be deemed potentially possessed and, just to stay on the safe side, will be executed. If he says anything mildly threatening or manipulating, he will be muzzled. If he persists, he may even get his lips stitched together and left to subsist on whatever they can feed him through a straw for the rest of his potentially very short life, as Arvaarad had put it. Ideally, she said, he should be equipped with a mask, blinders and a leash, his hands tied behind his back.

If he communicates, or even passively listens to any spirits in his head, he will be executed without a question. Magic is dangerous. Mages,  _saarebas_ , cannot be trusted to control their powers alone, which is why they appointed Arvaarad as his own personal Templar. 

'Shitty situation' doesn't even begin to cover it.

Loki almost falls as he climbs into the tub, knees buckling from the effort. Arvaarad raises an eyebrow as he rights himself, keeping her distance, vaguely amused, cool and practical as ever.

The hot water of his first bath since forever feels ridiculously good, and Loki fails to swallow a low moan as he sinks in to his waist. He's filthy and bloody, and sweaty, and nauseated, and he  _hates_  it, hates himself, trapped by his own stupid carelessness, weak as a newborn kitten and leashed by a collar like some blighted mabari.

“I’ll let you soak for a bit," he hears her say. "Don’t get the back wet, I’ll treat it later. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Loki nods, knuckles white as he holds on to the edges of the tub, the edges of his dignity. Arvaarad nudges him to lean forward, and when she pours warm, fragrant water from a pitcher over his head, careful, calloused fingers carding through his hair, lathering it with soap that smells of briar, it’s suddenly too much, too much, and he can’t take the small, simple pleasures at the bottom of this well of despair. 

Something shudders, something gives, and he realizes he's in tears, ruined shoulders wrecking with ugly sobs.

Arvaarad pats his head awkwardly, and somehow Loki doesn’t even mind anymore, he’s so tired he’s beyond his emotions, beyond shame and anger, and wounded pride. They've defeated him, torn him down to the bare basics, and what are they? Even his sickly pale skin is not his own, his dark hair and green eyes that belonged to a mother he never knew; his blasphemous, wonderful, cursed magic now forbidden and out of his reach. 

Who is he anymore? Does it even matter?

His leaving Asgard, the bloody snows of White River, the long, madness-tinged trip to Highever and the whole damn duration of his captivity feels like a sordid, impossible nightmare, one he has finally left behind as he finds himself stark naked in a tub of sudsy water, held by the small, strong hands of his captor, his _enemy_ , as he purges his mind and soul.

And somehow, it becomes easier to continue to exist.

She withdraws from his wet grasp when only wrung out, tired emptiness remains. He watches her grab a sponge and dip it in the water, muttering something under her breath as she starts methodically scrubbing the filth from him, and Loki has no strength or will left to protest when she treats him like a child.

In the end, she helps him stand, and then rinses him down with clean water from her pitcher, pats him dry with a grey linen towel. Loki stands numb like a statue and only wants to crawl back in bed. Awkwardly and slowly he puts on the white linen pants she gives him, and is not much surprised at how loose they hang on his hips. 

The arvaarad supports him as she walks him back to his room, helps him sit and then lie down on his stomach. Rolling her eyes, she grabs a towel and pats dry Loki’s neck around the collar.

“Remember to do this next time. You don’t want sores there. Now lie still, I have to see what you did to your back.”

Exhausted from the seemingly simple ordeal, Loki shuts his eyes and barely feels her poking around his wounds, pulling out the torn threads, daubing on some salve and then rewrapping his back and shoulders.

It doesn’t hurt, Loki tells himself as she changes the bandages on his forearms and clasps on a new pair of leather cuffs, secures him to the bedframe. 

She retrieves her book and stretches out on one side of the bed once more. Loki sleeps.

Nothing is going to hurt him anymore.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think about Arvaarad? :)
> 
> And btw, there exists a playlist for this story ([here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyq2N7nVEGUSyfhmPVSGRdFro479YvTa4)), with the idea as follows:
> 
>   1. Intro: "Chaos is a ladder"
>   2. Ride from Lothering: Rob Zombie "Beginning of the end"
>   3. At the inn: Emilie Autumn "4 o'clock" and Starset "My demons"
>   4. Road to White River: Therion "Black sun"
>   5. White River to Highever: Metallica "Unforgiven I"
>   6. Highever: Disturbed "Sound of silence"
>   7. White marble plaza: SOAD "Spiders", Kirlian Camera "Heaven's darkest shore", Emilie Autumn "The art of suicide"
>   8. Arvaarad's house: DA soundtrack "Qunari on the rise", Linkin Park "In the end" and Cigarettes After Sex "Nothing's gonna hurt you baby" 
> 



	4. The White Cottage I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small reminder that Thedas is on a southern hemisphere.

The kitchen is a good place. The floor is old, reddish-brown terracotta tiles with some cracked corners and a well-worn surface. The thick, whitewashed walls shield the house from the midday blaze, and the windows are placed in such way that they create a near-constant, refreshing breeze through the house.

A quite different approach to architecture, Loki thinks as he perches on the stool in the corner and watches Arvaarad knead flatbread dough on the counter. Houses on Seheron are built to keep the heat out, not in. His north-side room doesn’t have a window, while the south-facing kitchen window he’s sitting by opens to a shady, small backyard with a simple porch. It is sinking in lush vegetation — a couple banana plants and various flowering shrubs are carefully potted and placed on accurate grey slate tiles. Loki scrunches his nose and turns away from the window, wraps his hands tighter around the clay mug of lemon water he’s been given. Accurate tiles bring up unpleasant memories.

Deeper in the house, facing the same lush backyard, is Arvaarad’s bedroom, and another spare room she uses for storage. Then there’s also the washroom that usually features just a curtained-off toilet, some shelves with household items and a couple buckets of water brought in from the yard for washing the face or small items of clothing. Normally all bathing is done in a public bathhouse, and the dirty laundry is handed over to the washers.

It’s a small cottage, but with high ceilings and doorways, built for the Qunari. The furniture is not new, but it’s human-sized, probably passed through several hands before ending up in this house. A lot of things seem to be communal with the Qunari.

Loki takes another sip. He’s been told to drink the whole jug of lemon water before dinner, and he sees no point in arguing. He needs to regain his strength, and the warm, humid climate of Seheron needs some getting used to.

The half-healed back hurts persistently and annoyingly under the loose, bright red shirt Arvaarad has got him.

“You know, I hate lecturing,” Arvaarad speaks up as she beats the dough into submission. “But you’re wrong if you think you can ignore this whole thing and it will just go away. It won’t.”

“Hm?” Loki forces himself to listen. He’d really rather be left alone with his quiet, drowsy non-thoughts.

Arvaarad shoots him an impatient glare. “I’m saying you should give it a try. Under the Qun, everything and everyone has its rightful place. Even _saarebas_ like you.”

“They flogged me,” Loki says simply.

“Tough luck.” Arvaarad shrugs a shoulder. “The Ben-Hassrath work ruthlessly to protect the Qun, to root out dissidents and other threats. Apparently they thought you needed some softening up before you start listening.”

“I’m still collared. Threatened with execution if I as much as sneeze wrong.”

“It’s for your own safety, and the safety of people around you. Have you seen a real abomination outside of your Chantry textbooks? Mages possessed by demons, skin turned inside out, blood everywhere. Stuff of nightmares.” She wrinkles her nose in disgust. “And the blood magic that leads to that? Vicious, unnatural use of one’s life-blood, and the life-blood of helpless slaves and prisoners of war.”

“No,” she continues with dark determination. “Like organs of a body, all members of the society must work together for the common good, and mages need control.” Arvaarad rolls her shoulders and pushes up the sleeves of her dark blue shirt, leaving flour smudges on the dark fabric. “I’ve seen enough of Tevinter magister spells, blood magic included. It’s… chilling.”

Avoiding sharp movements so as not to stress his trigger-happy keeper, Loki gets up and refills his cup.

“Surely you’ve heard about the Circles of Magi, about the Harrowing?” he asks.

Arvaarad watches him from the corner of her eye until he’s sitting on the stool once more. Loki idly wonders if her dirty hands would interfere with the function of the control stick.

“I’ve heard plenty,” she says. “But you’re not a Circle mage, and no one put your apostate ass through the Harrowing back in Asgard, did they?”

“No,” Loki admits. “No, they didn’t.”

“So how do you know your mind is strong enough to stand against the demons?”

“I was taught well.”

The keeper shrugs again. “Famous last words, for an unharrowed mage.”

The dough is ready. Arvaarad crouches down and puts some firewood in the oven, adds some kindling and lights it. The cast-iron door shuts with a clang. Arvaarad stands and starts forming the dough into small, flat pancakes.

Loki watches her easy, practiced movements and thinks about… well. Even now, months since his leaving Asgard, Loki finds he doesn’t know what to call the teyrna that raised him, that guided his first steps in magic. That lied to him his whole life. 

Frigga was the one who taught him to ignore the whispers in his head, to pay no attention and give no quarter to the tempting promises of Pride and Desire, the hurtful accusations of Rage, the destructive advice from Sloth. To never lose himself in arguments and barters even with seemingly benevolent spirits.

“You have your beautiful mind, my darling,” she’d say. “Your kind heart and strong will that grows stronger by the day. Never give it away, whatever they promise you!”

Even as his life tumbled down around him, Loki had known not to succumb to possession. Pity that she hadn’t been able to secure his mind against the whispers from this side of the Veil too.

“They’ll see your worth,” she’d say. “Some day, they’ll see, just do not give up.”

Lies. Sweet, poisonous, selfish lies... He cannot be truly angry at her, but it hurts to think of her nevertheless.

Pushing away the thought, he remembers his other teacher Malcolm Hawke, and his little family on the outskirts of Lothering. Strange, that they’d completely escaped his mind these past weeks.

Where…  _Frigga_  had been taught by Rivaini hedge-witches and her own instincts, Malcolm Hawke had been an escaped Circle mage, with seemingly boundless knowledge of history, anatomy, geography, magical theory. Loki had soaked up his words and instructions like parched earth in spring, exhilarated to show off new spells to his proud, enchanted not-mother, to debate Ferelden’s and Orlais’ complicated past, to discuss the Nevarran Accord, the Chantry, the Circles, the Inquisition, and the Seekers of Truth.

But tied to the memories of his studies and Frigga’s encouragement is the shadow of his not-brother, his raucous, loud laughter and dim-witted pastimes, misplaced aggression and empty, idiotic righteousness; and trailing that would come memories of Odin, and… Loki shuts down that train of thought ruthlessly.

It would be better for everyone if his and Odin’s paths never crossed again.

With a satisfied smile, Arvaarad flicks open an overhead cupboard and brings out a pan. The cast-iron surface of the oven is still not hot enough for her liking, so, throwing in some more firewood and then pushing up the sleeves against her hips, she gathers the dirty dishes and kitchen utensils and nods at Loki to follow her out.

The heat hits him in the face, the bright light makes his skin crawl. The shiny dark leaves of the potted bananas and a bright yellow Antivan rose in the backyard look almost sweaty. But then there is a fat bumblebee on one of the flowers, and it looks so peaceful and content. For the bee, the sun is a friend. For Loki, born in the snows and recently whipped under the sun's scorching rays… not so much.

“Help me with the water pump,” Arvaarad interrupts his gloomy thoughts. “Just don’t pull your back open again.”

Loki looks at the long metal handle with peeling bluish gray paint. Help her? Arvaarad meanwhile finds a towel and a clean bucket for the washed dishes, sits down on the old bench by the pump.

“You need a special invite?” Brown eyes stare up at Loki with impatience, and still Loki hesitates. He knows full well how quick her reflexes are, how pointless his attempts would be at wrestling the control device from her, and how well-guarded are the seemingly empty, drowsy streets. He’s learned from her already that Seheron is a fortress with an active defense garrison, not a sleepy coastal town.

She waits.

She could say something. Remind him who’s in control and how crap he is at focusing his magic without a staff even if he tried to use it. Remind him of the garbage cart and Viddasala, and stitched lips and executions. But she just waits.

Loki grabs the handle and pulls it up. Water sputters in the tap and then flows in a clear, steady stream when he pushes it down again.

He doesn’t deceive himself thinking she’s not the enemy or that she’s some kind of a lesser evil. But it is clear he needs a decent strategy. He needs to turn his thoughts to the long game.

Like the oven heating up in the kitchen, waiting for the right time.

 

***

A few days later, Loki would swear he knows the white cottage by heart, every nook and cranny, every shelf and cupboard. Out of pure boredom if nothing else, Arvaarad has had him help her scrub every surface of the house and sort the whole mess of clothes, armour, camping gear, unnecessary pots and pans, ropes, even horse tack and a tent, that she'd stashed away in the storage room. Only her bedroom remains locked, all her weapons and his staff tantalizingly out of his reach.

Loki avoids activities and poses that stretch his upper back and shoulders, and he still gets tired too easily (fucking embarrassing, really), and sometimes he's a hair's breadth away from strangling Arvaarad with his bare hands, consequences be damned, but somehow they're starting to get along, and his wounds are healing.

They talk about the Qun, its main tenets and principles, and about Seheron. He wouldn't have pegged her for a scholar, but she's surprisingly knowledgeable about the philosophy and the local history. 

“The Qunari don't believe in ignorance,” she explains. “All converts, from all walks of life, receive solid education. You will be taught the Qun too. When you heal.”

“Taught — that's just a pretty word for brainwashing,” Loki argues.

“No. The Qun makes sense when little else does,” Arvaarad promises.

Loki doesn't know whether to look forward to that day or to fear it. He needs a plan, and to develop a plan, he needs information. A rage that Viddasala almost beat out of him is waking once more, and Loki is almost relieved to feel it boiling in his blood again. A pride that’s been belittled and slighted his whole life is chafing at the collar, is internally screaming at the leather cuffs, is constantly eyeing the control device at Arvaarad’s waist, and scheming, planning, churning in his head.

He needs to get out of the house, assess the security measures in the port and at the gates of the town, investigate escape routes. But he's vulnerable without his staff or any weapon, and he will need to find a way around that too. A kitchen knife would suffice, if he can't get his hands on anything else.

Where would he go if he managed to escape? Tevinter? The Free Marches? Nevarra or Orlais?

He certainly doesn't plan to return to Asgard, not even Ferelden.

In the now clean and orderly spare room, he runs his hand over the backs of the books he's unpacked from dusty boxes and placed on shelves in a dull rainbow of greys and browns. He picks a travel diary by Brother Genitivi and smiles for the first time since forever.

While he’s healing in Arvaarad’s house, he knows he has some time.

 

***

“I’m booored,” Arvaarad groans, lowering the double-handed greatsword she’s been polishing to the floor with a clang. “I need to get out, or I’ll lose my mind.”  

Loki, sitting cross-legged on his wicker bed and munching on some local fruit he’s already forgotten the name of, looks up from his reading. Arvaarad watches him with an open frown.

“How can you even read that dreary stuff?”

Loki shrugs.

“Genitivi's a naive idealist, but his works are a contemporary classic. And your other books are in Qunlat. Why was this even in your house if you don’t like it?”

Arvaarad rolls her eyes. “It was probably left behind by the previous owner of the house. I’ve only been living here for three months or so. I don't know and don't care. I like funnier books."

"A Qun convert who likes funny books." Loki raises an eyebrow. “Actually 'In Pursuit of Knowledge' is pretty funny, both in a sad sort of way, when you consider its original, nonsensical intent, but also he's describing all his misfortunes on the road in hilarious detail. Oh, but I'm terribly sorry, you weren't a devout Andrastian before the Qun enlightened your path, were you?”

The keeper ignores the question and instead picks up the sword again, stands up from the chair by the door and twirls the massive weapon in her hand. “Let’s go out,” she declares and then narrows her eyes at Loki. “If you promise to behave.”

Loki glares back at her.

"Shall I swear on pain of execution, or flogging?"

 

***

“So who were you before all this?” Loki pesters her as they walk down dusty, white streets where buildings have just started to cast the shadows of a late afternoon. “Continuing that body metaphor you used some days ago, which vital organ are you? The liver? The gall bladder?”

Arvaarad casts him an annoyed glance. “You're getting insolent,  _bas_. Do not offend.”

“I'm just curious. There’s no one in earshot.”

“ _I_  am. And failing in my job as  _arvaarad_  is not in my plans.”

"What happens if you fail?"

"I may get demoted. But as I said, failure is not in my plans."

More people appear on the streets as they near the central part of the town, bright clothes and traditional red and black rope ornaments looking even more lively on the backdrop of white buildings and street cobblestones. Loki watches the passers-by with interest, noting different craftsmen, messengers, guards, priests — Qunari, elves and humans of all possible skin colours and statures. It is a fascinating, motley crowd very different from Ferelden's predominantly pale-skinned human population, dressed in simple, warm clothes of wool and leather. The Asgardian penchant for clear, bright tones, for gold and silver colours is a cultural peculiarity, an irregularity in the sensible, subdued brown-grey landscape of the Kingdom of Ferelden.

Loki clenches his jaw when he realizes he's just contemplated humans as a race separate from himself. But does the bitter truth of his ancestry really make that much of a difference? He's always felt like the odd one out in Asgard, and not just because of his magic. Here, the colourful crowd leaves Loki bristling with curiosity, making him forget the collar around his neck, the scourge wounds on his back. The air feels ripe with potential, but something is missing, something is repressed, and Loki can't put his finger on what it is exactly.

They pass an old temple that has long since been adapted into a school for the Qunari children, raised collectively by  _tamassrans_. They pass the public bathhouse fed by hot underground springs, and a smaller building where a team of workers are busy repairing the roof.

"That's the hospital," Arvaarad explains. "There was a Tevinter attack on the fortress a few days before your arrival. A massive spell damaged the roof and destroyed the top floor in a fire. That's why you're staying with me at the moment, not a healer."

Loki glances curiously at his keeper. 

“You guessed correctly, _bas_ , I used to be a Fog Warrior. But that is in the past. I aligned my life with the Qun a couple years ago, and have since served with the Antaam, the army, defending the fortress,” she finally admits. "Until they decided I was ready for a more proactive role, and assigned me to babysit your noble Asgardian ass. Everyone else was busy elsewhere."

They take a shortcut through covered, shady courtyards. Knowing about the recent attack, Loki cannot help but notice the broken windows in top floors, the freshly painted walls, colour slightly different from the old one, mismatching brickwork in the arched gateways. The town has seen it’s fair share of warfare in the past decades.

“So about those roles,” he asks. “Who decides your job?”

Arvaarad kicks a piece of rubble down the street. “The  _tamassrans_ , mostly. They assess a Qunari child’s or a convert’s strengths and weaknesses, their inclinations and interests, then advise on the best career choice.”

“Considering they changed yours, that decision is not final, is it?”

“Well, you’re not  _locked_  in a role for life. If the demands of the Qun change or if you’re no longer... appropriate for a role, the  _tamassrans_ can reassign you.”

“And if I don't like the path that they so kindly suggest?” Loki asks.

Arvaarad walks in silence for a while, a slight frown on her face.

“If you're best at something, why would you reject it?” she finally asks.

“There is freedom in the Qun,” she continues, “but most  _bas_  do not understand it. You are free to be who you are, to serve the common good by simply striving to be the best version of yourself. The freedom lies in accepting your role, and you can decide whether to succeed or fail in that role.”

Finally, they reach the fortress sitting on a cliff and overlooking the port. Arvaarad greets the guards by the gate with a sweet smile and a friendly exchange of insults in Qunlat, and then they are inside, walking to the far side of the courtyard where there is an arena covered with reddish, dried earth. Loki hates to admit it even to himself, but he's not exactly well yet, and the long walk has left him slightly dizzy. A soft-spoken Qunari healer, the same one from the accursed square of precise white marble tiles, had stopped by Arvaarad's house the day before, mentioning aftereffects of lyrium poisoning and extended periods of poor physical condition and malnutrition. Loki cannot say he disagrees with the diagnosis.

Arvaarad leaves him on a bench by the massive, slightly cool fortress wall and joins the fighters training in the arena. The fortress is heavily guarded, so Loki 'behaves', sitting quietly and just watching his keeper brandish her sword with a feral grin as she attacks a Qunari warrior twice her side. Through lowered lids he watches her movements, so brilliantly quick and strong, the heavy sword in her grip cutting through the air with almost unnatural grace. Loki may not choose such a large and heavy weapon for himself, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t recognize the skill in her movements. He'd be lying if he said he weren't proud of her, because, well, she is _his_ keeper, after all.

She is formidable, and a blind idiot would see that melee is her nature.

What would the  _tamassrans_  say is his? Lies? Cowardice? Magic tricks?

He knows Arvaarad is keeping her eye on him even as she forces her opponent to surrender, knows that even if she slips up, the two guards lounging by the arena surely keep watch on him too. The damn collar screams to the heaven that he is a  _saarebas_. A dangerous thing.

What if… Loki lets the thought die unformulated, but the blasphemous, strange, poisonous seed of an idea remains.

What if the Qun is where he can finally fit in without having to pretend to be someone else?

 

***

They return to the cottage in the evening, long shadows repainting the white marble town into shades of blue and violet.

Almost used to the nightly routine, Loki shucks off his shirt, pleasantly dark green this time, and shuffles to the bathroom, fills a metal bowl from one of the buckets and splashes the cool, clear water in his face. It’s a simple pleasure to run the washcloth over his upper body, washing away the sweat and dust, and stupid thoughts of the day. His hands still when he reaches his collared neck.

"Don't even think about it," Arvaarad warns him, standing in the bathroom door, but this time it almost sounds like a request. As if they're friends; as if she's burned out and hiding it; not exactly over the moon about her new keeper duties, and she doesn't want to argue with him, but neither does she want to fail.

That's… magic. He's perceptive, but he still shouldn't be able to read her mood so easily. Loki glances away, hiding his gaze from her. Something mind and mood related. Emotions and expectations. Entropy magic? Has it been that long since he’s cast any spells, that magic is starting to escape him? It has happened before, when he tried to hide his magic from the court. Frigga quickly told him to find a quiet yard or secret meadow for his spellwork, to avoid dangerous and uncontrolled outbursts.

He’ll need to consider this risk now. Loki quickly towels himself dry and then follows Arvaarad to his room where she has already prepared for the nightly treatment of his wounds and change of bandages.

"How long is this going to continue?" he suddenly asks, gesturing at the bed and glancing around to see where the usual leather cuffs are. "Until I can sleep on my back again? Until you convert me to your Qun? And then what?"

“Then we’ll see. It depends on what purpose they discover for you,” Arvaarad says simply.

“So there was no plan in my capture? You’re making it all up as you go?”

Arvaarad’s dark eyes gleam in the low candle light of the room. “Listen,  _bas_ , because I won’t repeat it. You weren’t planned at all. You were just a random vagrant until our spies recognized you as the son of the teyrn of Asgard. Your capture is pure coincidence, and if you hadn’t showed your nose outside of your home, the Ben-Hassrath wouldn’t have gone after you.”

Loki feels cold resignation and the bitter taste of truth settle in his stomach. So all this had been pure coincidence and a mistake too.

“Chin up,  _bas_!” she continues brightly. “You’ll find your purpose here. Not every southerner gets a chance!”

“Your treatment of mages is not really convincing me to convert,” Loki growls as he lies down on his stomach and fluffs up the small pillow he’s recently found in the storage room. “It’s cold, your Qun.”

“It needn’t be,” she says, passing him a cup with some herbal infusion. “Now drink this. The Hulk says you’re well enough for this, and it’s his special recipe.”

“The Hulk?”

“Yeah, your healer. It’s a stupid nickname we gave him at the barracks. Drink up.”

Loki accepts the cup with suspicion. “What is it?”

“An alternative to tying you down, for good  _saarebas_  who behave.” Arvaarad gives him that full-lipped, sweet smile of hers. “You’ll sleep for eight hours straight without any nightmares. It’ll also help your back heal. It’s good for you.”

Eight hours of unconsciousness, of helplessness. Loki stares at the cup, calculating his options. He still has no plan and no weapon to aid his escape. He might manage to tackle Arvaarad if he splashed the draught in her face, but he knows he wouldn’t get any far. On the other hand, he’s starting to gain her trust. And she’s annoying, but she’s no Viddasala, and the collar is no scourge.

Loki thinks about the long game and drinks up.

Arvaarad takes away the cup when Loki lies down again. Her warm, strong hands apply the smelly salve on his shoulders, and then re-bandage his back. His forearms seem to have healed as best as possible. Lyrium has left a silvery web of shallow scars grooved into his skin, an eternal reminder of his capture, of his cursed sentimentality and bad luck.

Arvaarad picks up her book, a traditional Seheron folktale about a trickster who fools all invaders, and gets comfortable in her spot on one side of the bed where she usually reads until Loki falls asleep.

“The Qun needn’t be cold,” Arvaarad says again. “Think about it. Open your mind.”

But she’s staring off into space and only pretending to read.

 


	5. The White Cottage II

 

“You’re not  _forbidden_  to speak at the temple school,” Arvaarad says, opening the basket of clean laundry in the washing room and throwing Loki a clean, bright yellow shirt with black rope embroidery along the edge. “But take care what you say to the  _tamassrans_.”

“Where’s that black and silver tunic? Or the green shirt. Are all my normal clothes with the washers?” Loki protests.

“Yes,” Arvaarad deadpans and glares at him until Loki puts the shirt on with a huff.

“Don’t argue,” she continues. “Remember that the Qunari rarely speak the common tongue well. You can respectfully ask them to clarify, but don’t argue. And avoid any open or implied comparisons with the Chantry. Don’t get into trouble. Trouble, in this case, meaning a muzzle and a leash.”

Loki winces. Stepping to the mirror, he runs both hands through his hair, absent-mindedly noting how it’s grown past the embroidered collar.

“And here I thought you didn’t care...” he drawls.

“I don’t, I just don’t fancy talking to myself the whole time if they decide you need to shut up permanently.”

“If they ask you to kneel on the floor,” she continues, “don’t get your southerner hackles up. It’s a normal position. It signals attention and respect, as is due to the  _tamassrans_. Now look.”

When Loki turns around, Arvaarad is holding a pair of leather cuffs linked with a chain.

Loki raises an eyebrow even as a knot forms in his chest.

“I thought we were past this nonsense.”

Arvaarad stands her ground. “When you sleep, yes. The drink weakens your connection to the Fade so you wouldn’t have any dreams or nightmares, or uncontrolled discussions with your friends from beyond. But during the day, a  _saarebas_  keeps their hands behind their back.”

“We went to the arena without these.”

“And the chief of the guard called a shitstorm over my head for it.”

“I don’t even have my staff, what damage could I possibly do with my bare hands?” Loki argues.

“Wait, you’re saying…” The keeper grins. “You’ve never seen a  _saarebas_  cast? I thought they had one with them in Highever.”

“I don’t have an exactly clear memory of that fine day,” Loki spits. “What are you talking about?”

Arvaarad steps closer and grins in his face.

“ _Saarebas_  channel magic without a staff, buddy. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”

Loki stills with surprise. They’re all hedge mages? That’s so... inefficient. It's uncontrolled and — yes — dangerous! But it’s also _captivating_ — in the way that all new, unconventional, stupid, risky ideas are. Loki’s so hooked by the concept he doesn’t even mind when Arvaarad turns him roughly around and puts on the cuffs. They feel flimsy, compared to the lyrium shackles. Surely he can break them if needed. But successfully casting battle spells without a staff?

He knows the Qunari don’t teach their mages, they just want them to have perfect control over their powers. And they do so without a material, physical object as a focus? How do they do it? How is it possible to achieve such high level of concentration?

“Shall we?” He starts towards the door and flashes Arvaarad a wolfish grin. “I’m suddenly very much interested in your Qun.”

  

*** 

It’s almost Satinalia, which they, of course, don’t celebrate on Seheron, when the weather grows cooler, the western winds bringing heavy, grey clouds from the Amaranthine Ocean. Soon, the rains start, and Arvaarad says they will continue for ten to twelve weeks before a few weeks of cool, dry weather will give way to the spring.

Loki finds himself starting to push the thoughts of escape to some unclear, distant future. Life with Arvaarad in their small white cottage is not exactly bad: they get along, more or less, and recently she hasn’t even threatened to use the control device on him.

The school for converts is on the eastern side of the town, surrounded by the living quarters and auxiliary buildings of the _tamassrans_ and other priest-class specialists not involved in raising the children. They are twelve converts at the adult school: six humans and four elves, a Tal-Vashoth regretting his erring ways, and the halfbreed joke that is Loki. There are usually a few guards stationed by the temple walls, and Arvaarad always makes sure they’re equipped to deal with her _saarebas_ before she takes the opportunity to go attend to her own private matters. The marble floor is cool beneath the simple straw mats they are all kneeling on, which, with his hands chained behind his back is actually the most comfortable position. Overall, the atmosphere in the covered gallery that serves as a classroom and surrounds a lush garden with a gurgling fountain is quiet and orderly.

The teacher reads them from the Tome of Koslun, explains the prophet’s advice in clear, logical detail. She speaks of restraint, of control, of greater good. She starts them on Qunlat grammar and vocabulary. She teaches them methods to cool down anger and pain, to free one’s mind of doubt and fear, to help them achieve order and clarity.

Loki listens, skeptical at first and then with a growing fascination, because... it’s so elegantly simple. It actually makes sense, at least more so than the Chantry texts ever have. The Qun doesn’t demand his belief in some absent god offended over an unannounced house visit by a bunch of devotees. It doesn't require him to believe in any gods at all. Neither does it entertain the concept of sin. Magic is seen as highly dangerous, but there are no implications of inherent sin. There is just order and chaos, success and failure.

The Qun offers Loki a practical edge in controlling his magic, and it’s interesting and different, even if its main premise — to bring order and prosperity to the world — feels somewhat naïve and unattainable. Nevertheless, Loki is captivated. Loki is learning.

But unlike Loki, Arvaarad is growing restless. There have been no Tevinter or Fog Warrior attacks for months, and she thinks something large is brewing. On some quiet, sombre evening she admits she's been diagnosed with  _asala-taar_ , a common soul-mind affliction among those serving on Seheron. She had been temporarily discharged from the army and given the white cottage for the time of her recovery, assigned a  _tamassran_  soul-healer. Which is another interesting thing, Loki thinks, because in Asgard she’d probably be declared unfit for service, weak-willed, broken. Or more probably — a lying coward.

When Loki had arrived, all  _arvaarads_  with their charges had been dispatched to deal with the last attack, which had continued inland. There had been no one in the town qualified to keep an eye on him, and the Ben-Hassrath had offered the job to Arvaarad. Who her friends call Scrapper, because does Loki really think the Qunari wouldn’t distinguish between people with the same job description?

The name tastes like wet wool on his tongue, and Loki continues to call her Arvaarad. Besides, it’s not like they’re exactly friends.

Loki still wonders how truly she has converted to the Qun. Either due to that  _asala-taar_ _,_ or for other reasons, she is not the most perfect follower of its rules. Not that he minds, because it means Loki only needs to wear the handcuffs and watch his tongue in public, but otherwise Arvaarad doesn’t care enough to implement the drastic control required for  _saarebas_.

He’s even heard her arguing dismissively about it with the  _tamassrans_  and a few people from the Ben-Hassrath. Its Dangerous Questions branch seems the direction they would like to direct Loki in, and considering it involves espionage and sabotage, and does not involve Viddasala, Loki is tentatively not against the idea. (If he were, he’d be handed over to Dangerous Purpose, which is concerned with re-education of unwilling converts, and  _does_  include Viddasala in their ranks.)

The Ben-Hassrath serve under the Ariqun and are all considered belonging to the priest class. Hah. Loki a priest. ~~(Odin and the Revered Mother of Lothering chantry would have a fit if they knew.)~~

They still want to use his connection to Odin. And somehow, Loki still can’t make himself deny it, because there's still some incomprehensible part of him that's loyal if not to his liar family then to the teyrnir itself. He doesn't think that revealing his adopted status to a strange, invasion-happy nation would be in the best interests of Asgard. It’s dangerous enough that they know he’s an apostate mage.

Of course, they're not going to simply let him roam the southern kingdoms, sowing mayhem and chaos. There must be a strategy. There must be a method.

And so he’s taught the Qun and the Qunlat language, but otherwise left in peace while the Ben-Hassrath plan and wait for the right opportunity.

His back has healed, even if unsightly, jagged scars remain. Thanks to the many, varied street vendors and the army canteen at the town centre, Arvaarad and The Hulk make sure Loki regains the weight he’s lost since Asgard. Eventually, after some arguing with the  _tamassrans_  and consulting a few other keepers once they’ve finally returned to the fortress with their [wards](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e1/77/7a/e1777af8a130bb32db04e70270e95286.jpg) (the sight of the giant, hunched mages with sawed-off horns, locked in chains and in masks, chills Loki to the bone), Arvaarad even agrees to let him train with a simple wooden staff.

Loki can’t say he’s exhilarated at the prospect. It’s not a real weapon in the understanding of any southerner, and he’s not even tempted to use the stupid piece of wood for magic. It also reminds him of sweaty afternoons in the practice yard, and how desperately difficult it had been for him, with his lean build, to build up any muscles ~~(“It would be a shallow, fickle woman, who would look at you and find you wanting, my love.” — “Open your eyes, mother. They all fall over themselves to catch Thor’s glance. You can’t tell me the whole court is blind and stupid.”~~ ).

But the Qunari civilians use staves for self defense, they call the art  _reth-kasaam_ ; the walk to the arena is quite long and requires handcuffs, and Arvaarad is twitchy more often than not. And, logically thinking, he _should_ get himself back in form. To do otherwise would be a waste of his time and potential. (Since when has he started thinking in terms of the Qun?) So some of the potted bananas in the backyard have suffered, but Loki doesn’t care, and neither does the Valkyrie.

Most importantly, for the first time in his life, Loki doesn’t have to hide or pretend to be someone he’s not. He’s a mage, and it’s crystal clear to everyone on the street or at the fortress, or at school. His kind is pitied and limited, but also honoured, because attaining the kind of self-control required of a  _saarebas_  to constantly and successfully fight the threat of corruption in their head is the highest goal of the entire philosophy. And Loki learns, oh how he learns!

His mind feels  _his_  like it never was before. Frigga and Malcolm taught him well, but the Qunari methods of self-control  _work_ on a whole different level, and Loki is nothing if not a talented, intelligent student.

He has decided to follow Arvaarad’s advice and stop trying to ignore the new culture, the new philosophy he’s been immersed in. He’s giving the Qun a cautious chance, and in return it seems to be offering answers and purpose, an opportunity to replace the bitter ash and ruin from his previous life and to build a new one. But he is a  _saarebas_ , and he’s seen how battle mages are treated in the army. The Qun is certainly interesting, but he doesn’t think he can make himself believe in it so deeply as to agree to be treated like that himself.

So where does he draw the line between utility and conviction, between a pragmatic use of a methodology and an honest submission to a cruel truth?

What are the possibilities and probabilities of him  _not_  ending up leashed and muzzled? Loki doesn’t know, so he will try to learn that too. Surely he still has time?

It is a strange world he has been thrown into, so different from Asgard it feels unreal at times. Above all, his current life is a relief, and Loki sits quietly and thinks about this and other things as he counts his breaths, feels his heartbeat and focuses on the paths that free, staff-less elemental magic is carving through his body. It’s delightful, even if he never casts any actual spells. It’s relaxing and soothing, a promise of… something. Loki can’t make up his mind, of what exactly.

The Qunari  _saarebas_  are dangerous because they’re not taught magic. Loki has been taught the theory and the structural frameworks for building new spells. He knows what he wants his magic to do, and he knows how to direct it, and when he’s done, he’ll know how to cast combat spells without a material focus.

The elusive wisps of hedge magic that used to escape him after weeks of no focused outlet, are in his firm grasp now, and contemplation of the vast differences between the Qun and the Andrastian faith are a huge help in letting him escape thoughts of Asgard.

The nightly herbal infusion seems to help too. Loki’s still not exactly sure what it contains, but apart from weakening his connection to the Fade, it also seems to have a long-lasting soothing effect on his nerves and mind. It takes the edge off things, and that is a relief too. Loki doesn’t want to think too much about what it means and what it surely says about himself.

Arvaarad has meanwhile mended all her armour and polished all her swords and daggers. She’s apparently out of funny folklore books too, and the rain makes her irritated and gloomy, prone to picking meaningless fights with Loki or her fortress guard friends that sometimes drop in for a visit.

Lately, a  _tamassran_ soul-healerTalassala, also called Grey Dove, and thinner than any Qunari has a right to be, comes to see them at least once a week, rather than Arvaarad having to find opportunities to see her at the temple. Grey Dove talks with Loki too, in hesitant, broken common tongue, about his progress with the Qun and about his mental state, asks about his past. When Loki refuses to talk about it, she doesn’t press. She's nervous around him, but Arvaarad's constant presence helps. Sitting in the cosy, terracotta kitchen of their small cottage, the quiet healer often waits until Loki falls asleep and then talks with Arvaarad; the keeper says sometimes they sit up for hours, discussing life and people and everything.

He may have come from a closed-minded teyrnir that pretends these kinds of things don’t exist, but Loki thinks Arvaarad  _likes_  Grey Dove more than is strictly professional, and that the feeling is mutual. The Qunari have their own ideas about sex and relationships though, so Loki is slightly baffled about what’s going on between those two and how it may possibly work out under the Qun. At least Arvaarad starts, on good days, smiling more wistfully than threateningly, and stops acting like a coiled spring.

Loki knows he’s grown complacent, used to the heavy collar and the constant lack of privacy, to wearing handcuffs in public and drinking a potion that knocks him out for eight solid hours every night. It’s not ideal, but those are all visible, physical problems that he knows he can solve or get rid of… whenever he decides to concentrate his efforts in that direction. But for a change, his problems are not a damning internal fear of letting  _someone_  down or not living up to  _someone’s_  expectations. There is no comparison to other mages or anyone really, no fear of Chantry’s discovery and potentially bringing its wrath upon his family.

Here on Seheron, Loki is simply Loki, and it’s  _enough_  as far as everyone’s concerned.

 

*** 

It’s a drowsy evening towards the end of the rain season, and the air smells of decay and moss and mud. With no seeming rhyme or reason, Grey Dove has decided to spend it with them, and Loki feels Arvaarad’s rare, quiet contentment hanging in the air, soft like a memory of willow catkins in spring.

Loki sighs, lounging on the pillows they’ve piled on the terracotta tiles of the porch at the back of the house, his head in Arvaarad’s lap as she sits against the wall. It's strange how he's got so used to her being a permanent fixture in his life. Warm cinnamon _maasala_ in his belly is spreading simple happiness through his every bone and tendon.

“Do they revere dragons in the south?” Grey Dove quietly wonders, noticing the old carving of a wyvern hidden in dark evening shadows above the cottage door. Rain chatters softly on the roof, in harmony with the rhythmic, light cadences of her voice. “The Old Gods that ruled the world once, before their Andrastian Maker?”

Rain chatters softly on the roof and the leaves. The rattan chair squeaks under the Qunari’s weight as she crosses her long legs that shine silvery in the dark. Arvaarad’s supple, cornflower blue cape, draped around her shoulders, brushes against Loki’s cheek.

“It is not talked of much, from what I know,” she ventures, warm fingers carding absent-mindedly through Loki’s dark locks. “Until a Blight comes. A high dragon terrorizing the continent every once in a while, that’s a bit hard to keep out of people’s minds.”

Dove rests her proud double horns against the backrest and watches Arvaarad through half-lidded amber eyes.

“Why should they? Would not truth serve them better?”

“And what truth would that be?” Arvaarad muses. “That our world might not have been created by the _basra_ Maker? That other gods — Old Gods, elven gods, whatever — that they might be real gods, and not just mindless beasts, corrupted by the Blight?”

“The Chantry teaches they are the enemy,” Loki murmurs, relaxed in the pillows and the multilayered semantics of the language he’s taken to like duck to water. “In the Chant of Light, the dragon gods are clearly the root of evil. The priests listened to the Old Gods and then attempted to enter the Golden City…”

He pauses for a moment, but the world is dark and magical, and soothing. On Loki’s silver tongue, the damning lines from the Chant easily find their expression in Qunlat.

“ _The demons who would be gods began to whisper to men from their tombs within the earth. And the men of Tevinter heard and raised altars to the pretender-gods once more_ ,” he quietly cites the Threnodies, and Arvaarad’s fingers still in his hair, but Grey Dove raises her _maasala_ cup again, and the rain chatters on the leaves like before. 

“The dragon gods were corrupted,” Dove says, her gaze distant as she sips her drink. “Gods of unity and freedom corrupted into archdemons bringing the Blight, becoming harbingers of death and chaos.”

“Their names still remain in the stars,” Arvaarad murmurs. “The old constellations.”

Loki glances out absent-mindedly, but the sky is full of rain and darkness, not stars and dragons.

“Dumat, Zazikel, Toth, Andoral, Urthemiel, Razikale, and Lusacan,” Arvaarad cites their names and then chuckles at Dove’s incredulous look. “What? I like dragons!”

“How were they corrupted?” Loki asks.

“Zazikel was the God of Freedom,” his keeper says quietly. “Corrupted into the Dragon of Chaos, he brought about the Second Blight. Andoral was the God of Unity, and became the Dragon of Chains and Slavery. Others were gods of Beauty and Silence, gods of Fire, Mystery and Night…”

“And now only Razikale and Lusacan slumber still,” Loki frowns as bits and pieces of his religious education rise to the forefront of his mind. He had liked stories about dragons when he was little — before his magic manifested and he felt on his own skin how restricting and unjust the Chantry and its teachings could be.

“Tell me how Freedom gets corrupted into Chaos,” he asks, closing his eyes when Arvaarad’s cool fingertips run lightly over his brow, smoothing his frown, wiping away mouldy memories.

“I don’t know,” she says.  “The ancient Tevinters associated the constellation [Kios](https://bengalaas.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/tumblr_nlh9mv44T71ss09jco2_r3_250.gif?w=450) with him. Your Satinalia feast used to be dedicated to him. Now it’s celebrated in honour of the second moon, and your Chantry maintains that the constellation is a dove, not a dragon. What nonsense...”

“ _Na via lerno victoria_ ,” Arvaarad murmurs. “ _Na vicit escrito historia_.”

“You speak Tevene?” Dove wonders.

Arvaarad shrugs, suddenly uncomfortable. “I knew someone who did. ‘Only the living know victory, and only the victorious write history’.”

“Truth is truth,” Dove argues drowsily. “It cannot be hidden forever.”

“You know a lot about dragons,” Loki murmurs, turning over on his back, Arvaarad’s leather-clad thigh a warm support for his head. Passive entropy magic is weird and wonderful: he feels Arvaarad’s smile shiver in the air, light as a butterfly. With his awareness of the magic sharpened, it's like he has acquired a new pair of eyes, learned to see colours that hadn’t existed before, even when the underlying intent of this particular energy is to find weakness, to destroy, to dismantle, to despoil. To turn dreams into nightmares. Turn hopes into regret. Freedom into chaos. That is the true nature of his entropy magic, after all.

“I was raised a Fog Warrior,” Arvaarad says. “I know my legends and history.”

Dove smiles. “And yet, sometimes I think you’re more Qunari than some who were born under the Qun.”

Loki can hear the affection in Dove’s voice. She  _liiiiikes_  Arvaarad. But she’s also wrong — mild disagreement and a tang of sadness wafts off his keeper.

Arvaarad raises her own cup in answer, her other hand resting on Loki’s chest, fingers drawing some half-conscious sigils on his shirtfront. The rain chatters softly on the roof and the leaves. It’s dark and magical, and the humid air smells of their cinnamon and cardamom drink, of the lingering tang of briar soap on Arvaarad’s cloak, of dragons and legends, and constellations of an ancient sky. Loki draws a deep breath and wishes to embed the night in his mind. It carries the smell of Seheron and its own unique, strange brand of freedom.

Dove’s soothing, low voice carries across the porch.

“Something weighs on you,  _kadan_.”

Arvaarad’s fingers still on Loki’s chest, a slight shiver runs through her when she hears the endearment. He can feel the darkness thickening between the two women, feels tendrils of desire, of discomfort, of fear. For a moment, Arvaarad thinks about sinking her hands in Dove’s lustrous white mane and kissing her hard on those warm, cinnamon scented lips, but then she remembers jungle and darkness, and flashes of blue lyrium on a downward slashing greatsword.

Loki closes his eyes and gathers his relaxed, inquisitive magic back to him, wraps himself in those wild tendrils and refuses to spy further. She’s been good to him. He doesn’t want to harm her, doesn’t want to infringe on the privacy of her mind any more than he has already.

“I was a Fog Warrior. A Valkyrie. The Qunari saved my life after that attack, and the Qun certainly gave me purpose,” Arvaarad starts. “But recently...”

“A while ago, Loki reminded me of something, stirred up old memories I cannot lay to rest,” Arvaarad says slowly, and Loki’s breath hitches. It’s the first time ever that she’s called him by his name. So she does know it, he thinks with a wisp of spite.

“Half a year ago when he first came here,” — wait, how can it be half a year already? — “he did a spell, and I remembered… No, he didn’t hurt me, Dove. But I remembered in vivid detail that betrayal of me and mine. All the deaths and...”

Half a year on Seheron. And how long had been the sea voyage before that? How long had he spent in the Ben-Hassrath secret dungeon near Highever, what if he only _thinks_  that darkness lasted a week?

“And you still feel guilty for trusting that man?” Dove asks, her voice low and full of desire to understand her messed-up Valkyrie of the Fog Warriors. “You couldn’t have known what choices he would make.”

But Loki’s peace is giving cracks and he only half-listens to the conversation now. Six months. Half a year of complacency and a leather collar that even now chafes against his neck. He tries to think, but his mind feels dull, calm, too  _lazy_  to move in the direction he wants it to. Lying in his keeper’s lap like some Orlesian pug! Since when has he become so _pathetic_? Where is his dignity, where is his… Oh, come to think of it, where  _is_  his old friend Pride?

Slowly, he sits up and glares at his keeper, roused tendrils of magic gathering around his wrists.

“What  _is_  in that blighted concoction that you give me?”

A thundering blast of canon fire and the low, deep sounds of horns coming from the fortress drown out any chance of an answer. Grey Dove lunges out of her chair, dashing through the house and out on the street to see what’s going on, and Arvaarad sprints after her. Loki curses and then follows the two.

Arvaarad counts the blasts.

“Tevinter fleet. Sixteen ships coming from Minrathous,” she says. “The Antaam and Ben-Hassrath to report to the fortress.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little Bruce was born as a Tal-Vashoth, and basically that meant a pretty straightforward career choice as a mercenary. His parents trained him well and Bruce ended up specializing as a Berserker. However, he hated fighting, hated losing control, hated killing people. So he did the rarely heard-of thing and actually converted back to the Qun.   
>  The Qunari re-trained him as a healer and researcher, and soon enough Bruce, called by his friends The Hulk due to his tall stature and impressive figure, improved an existing sleeping drought to help ex-Berserkers like him, suffering from PTSD.   
>  Too bad he never considered the side-effects of such an improved calming drought on mages, whose control over their own minds is kinda critical to prevent demon possession. And Sloth is a cunning one that often flies under the radar.


	6. Nothing Special

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gird your loins, Loki, vacation's over! >:)
> 
> Also, in case someone missed all the Qun-related tags, here's a reminder that this story touches upon a different culture, with a vastly different philosophy, which is wonderfully complicated and woefully misrepresented in canon (where the Qunari are the dedicated villains), and, yes, Loki does find it useful, and making much more sense than the Andrastian faith he grew up with; but rest assured he's still a snarky atheist.

 

Torches are brought out on the narrow streets as their neighbours rush out to secure their doors and windows. Many take off towards the keep to fight, or to the fortified temple in the eastern part of the town to take refuge — giant, orderly shadows barely visible in the pouring rain, armed with swords and spears, and the _glorious purpose_ that is the Qun.

Arvaarad’s dark leather armour blends with the night, so Loki keeps after the willowy, tall figure in white long skirt that is Dove. Blood is ringing in his ears, one of Arvaarad’s spare daggers a comforting weight against the small of his back, the sheath tucked hastily through his belt. She’s refused him his mage staff, and there has been no time to find which spare parts of Arvaarad’s armour would fit him. Loki hopes his experiments with hedge magic have been sufficient to actually cast any combat spells. There’s certainly enough resentment boiling in him right now, just _asking_ for some idiot Tevinter to show his face.

A rusty metal gate swings shut behind them as they skid to a halt at the central plaza, where their ways would part. The gate towards the eastern quarter is still open, with the civilians, both adults and children with their _tamas_ , rushing to safety in an orderly, well-practiced manner that reminds Loki just how commonplace such attacks on Seheron are.

He’d almost prefer panic. There’s something sickening in such composure in face of death and violence.

“Will you be safe at the temple?” Arvaarad asks Dove over the sound of running feet, pelting rain and someone calling out orders at the gate.

“We will endure. The victory is in the Qun,” Dove says simply, Loki’s wooden training staff gripped in her hand. She clasps Arvaarad’s shoulder briefly and then turns to go, but Arvaarad catches her by the wrist.

“Will _you_ be safe?” she insists.

“She said she’d be," Loki interrupts. "Now let’s get off this damn open square!” 

Something trembles in the fine structure of reality, a new tension that pulls at matter, and he braces himself against whatever massive spell the magisters must be preparing on the ships.

Oblivious, Dove just smiles down at the frustrated Valkyrie.

“Worry not, _kadan_. The walls of the temple are built to withstand more than what those jackals can throw at us.”

Loki recognizes the energy as a force spell in the making, something from a specialization that Malcolm taught Loki only in passing, and it’s brutal, glorious, raw magic that they better not get caught up in.

“Arvaarad, let’s go!”

Instead she presses Loki’s control rod in Dove's hand just when a powerful spell hits the battlements of the keep. Loki curses viciously as he feels the ground shake under his feet, gravity pulled tight and then freed like strings of a lute.

“Take him with you,” Arvaarad shouts over the distant rumble of falling rocks, the dismayed cries rising above the fortress and the growing chaos of people pushing past them on the square. 

Of course, the two non-mages haven't felt anything. 

“Yes, a brilliant plan!” Loki snaps, returning his attention to his _idiot_ of a keeper. “An unqualified healer with a dangerous thing like me! _What could possibly go wrong?_ ”

“ _Kadan_ , you’re making a mistake,” Dove protests, holding out the rod for Arvaarad, and Loki itches to snatch it from her fingers, because this arguing is so painfully pointless he wants to carve out his eyes with a spoon for even witnessing it.

“Mistake?!” He is seething. “You’re signing my death warrant, trying to make me protect your lover!"

"I'm trying to protect you too, you fool of a _bas_!"

"Protect me? How's that protecting _me_? I'm supposed to follow you! Where’s your Qun now, when you need it? Where is your goddamn, rational, _cold_ Qun?!”

“Dove, take him with you,” Arvaarad’s voice breaks, and then she yanks Loki down by his collar, the sharp tip of her dagger pressed under his chin. “Watch the Qun _burn_ me, Silvertongue, and never doubt its truth!”

“ _Kadan_ , no!”

“I’m a shitty _arvaarad_ anyway, Dove.” Her brown eyes bore into Loki’s green ones like that first time he woke up in her cottage, flogged and poisoned halfway to death. “You protect her with your life, you hear me, Loki? With everything you’ve got!”

“No, think! You’re his keeper! It will not end well! Scrapper? _Brunnhilde_!”

Loki holds her gaze, boiling with rage at her idiocy, at her sleep draught, at her _sentimentality._  He refuses to give her any answer at all. A drop of his blood runs down her dagger, and then the Valkyrie decides to take her chances with him and runs; her daggers flash bleakly in the rainy night and then she’s gone.

Grey Dove lets out a string of curses that nobody has thought to teach Loki, and then she's stepping backwards, control rod gripped in a shaking hand.

"Don’t come near me. I’m not trained to deal with any of your magic shit!”

Loki pushes the drenched hair from his eyes and tries to weigh his options with something resembling rationality. The plaza has mostly cleared out now, and the gate towards the eastern quarter will be closed any minute now. He could try and find Arvaarad at the fortress. Or he could wrestle the control rod from Dove and make a break for it. With all the current chaos, he might even succeed.

Loki glances over his shoulder where a green glare is illuminating the night sky between the buildings surrounding the empty plaza. On top of the force magic blast, the keep is burning with veilfire, the army’s mages no doubt fighting it as best they can. The attack is currently contained at the fortress, but it would be strange of the Tevinters to not ransack the town, and Loki doesn’t think they are going to pass up the opportunity.

A cold certainty settles in the pit of his stomach. Like back in Asgard, where all the little lies and inconsistencies had pointed him to the truth even before he had discovered it, the lingering aftershocks of the massive force spell and the use of veilfire — a tricky and ancient piece of magic he's never seen used for destruction — amalgamate into a few simple facts.

The attackers are more powerful than anyone has expected, and the temple is not safe.

Before he has made a conscious decision, Loki finds himself running after Grey Dove, who has used his short moment of contemplation to make for the gate. He catches up to her with the last craftsmen seeking refuge, and the gate swings shut behind them. He pushes her into a side alley, the Qunari too shaken to put up much fight, and raises his hands in supplication when she swings her staff at him, white braid flashing in the darkness.

“ _Vashedan_! Why did you follow?!”

“I won’t harm you. I won’t use any magic on you,” Loki promises. “But you’re not going to the temple.”

“No, not with you on my tail I’m not!” Dove’s voice is tinged with a fury he never would have expected from the even-tempered healer. “And neither are you! I know a spirit of Sloth was trying to ensnare you, but it’s a Pride spirit that preys closest on your mind, isn’t it? You're a threat! Why won’t you understand, _accept_  that?”

“I’m not planning on getting possessed,” Loki snarls.

“Hear your pride speaking! Pride is among the most powerful demons, surely you know that? If you give in to it, you could easily destroy everything, level half of Seheron! Don’t you dare go even near the temple!”

“ _Don’t_ presume to know me, Talassala!”

“Oh, am I wrong? Was it not your wounded pride that made you flee Asgard? Was it not your trampled self-worth that always desired for more, for acknowledgement, for praise, for being something more than the second son always lurking in the shadows? _Admit_ that you’re walking on knife’s edge and that your fall could doom us all!”

Loki’s fists clench as he feels his throat choking up. It’s surprising how much she has gleaned from their few conversations. Arvaarad must have told her some of it. It’s not the full truth, it doesn’t even begin to cover all the lies he had been brought up to believe in, but it cuts close enough, and he wants to hit her, to carve out her heart, to run and never come back. To the Void with all these people, with Seheron, with everything!

Something metallic hits him between the shoulder blades when he turns to leave.

“Yes, go, run again… Your place was with her!” Dove sounds on the verge of tears. “Now she has failed, intentionally so, and will be punished. If she even survives the attack!”

Loki stares, dumbfounded, at the control rod she’s just hurled at him rolling around on the slippery pavement. He picks up the thing, it feels strange to finally hold it in his hand.

“You could use it,” he hears his own voice as if from a distance. “It’s not that complicated. Why are you still afraid of me?”

Grey Dove is leaning against a wall, thin shoulders tense with anguish.

“It is not my place,” she chokes out. “I am but a healer.”

Loki stares down at the rod in his hand. If he ran, what would his place be? _Where_ would it be, if not on this damned green, wet island with its damned white cottages and banana pots, and fragrant  _maasala_ drinks? The island where broken people get help, and magic is put to actual use, not locked away in tall towers?

Another massive spell shakes the fabric of reality, reverberating in his bones, tugging at his own magic. Loki braces himself against the opposite wall.  He’s sure pissed about the sleeping potion and about the idiotic move Arvaarad just pulled, but he cannot abandon her and Dove in the middle of this mayhem.

“I could try to leave the city,” he tells the Qunari. “But if they catch me without an _arvaarad_ , this won’t be another Highever, I won’t go quietly. Do you want the blood of your people on my hands? Or can you take that rod and _pretend_ for a moment that you’re my keeper, until we find Arvaarad and sort out all this mess?”

Grey Dove heaves a long shuddering sigh as she straightens up and brushes drenched locks of hair from her face.

“I hate lying. It is not the way of the Qun.”

Loki almost laughs. Perhaps it would do the rest of Thedas a bit of good, to have it conquered and converted to the Qun after all, if it meant less lies and betrayals.

“There is this concept of _basvaarad_ ,” he ventures. _“_ Would that work with you? If I recognize you worthy of following or some such thing?”

Dove measures him with a troubled glance. “I’m not _bas_. But… I don’t know. Do you?”

Now it’s Loki’s turn to assess his companion. She’s young, about his own age. Beautiful, in her own double-horned, black-taloned, six-foot-eight kind of way that apparently ticks all his keeper’s boxes. And with how she has guessed about his demons, Loki must admit she’s competent, far more so than her job on Seheron would warrant.

Loki extends his hand and clasps her forearm when she does the same, the ancient Asgardian gesture ingrained in his muscles feeling like a remnant of another life.

“Partners,” he offers. “You do your job, and I’ll do mine. We make decisions together.”

“Alright.”

“Then let’s go find Arvaarad.”

 

***

The gate to the plaza is shut, and Loki remembers seeing many more internal gates on the streets that surely have been closed by now too. Dove, a ghostly grey figure in the night, leads him towards the fortress by the only way that is left: through a labyrinth of lush, wet yards, over crumbling garden walls and through unlocked passages. The washer quarter has them winding their way around pools and basins with running water, Dove’s horns getting caught in the empty clotheslines invisible in the rainy darkness, Loki’s neck smarting where he ran straight into a lower-hanging one.

The town is eerily silent around them, everyone either fighting at the fortress or taken refuge in the temple. Only occasional whispers from behind shuttered windows or a basement hatch belie the illusion of abandonment.

The fight echoes in the distance, and Loki is wrought with a nervous energy, his magic is soaring, pulsing at his fingertips. The night is ripe with the promise of chaos, of new beginnings; the rain makes the ground swell, and he’s wading through mud and lush grass, through passages that still remember a time before the Qunari, perhaps even before the Tevinters, and Loki wants… He feels alive for the first time in months, and he _wants_ — to fuck, to fight, to unleash his magic from the chains that have been choking him.

They reach the perimeter wall of the city, their hands scraped against the corners and clothes torn on fences and thorny bushes. They don’t care. They run along the wall until they find a narrow stair leading up sideways, and then they climb up, up, up, rising above the clay tile roofs and courtyards on their right and the black mass that is the jungle beyond the wall on their left.

Rushing after his companion, Loki slips on the last step of the worn, wet stone stairs, balancing precariously above what suddenly feels like a black abyss.

For a heartbeat he thinks he is going to fall — again — into darkness — and die a pointless, grotesque death on the cobblestones below, rain washing away the blood, and beating, pelting, rotting away his flesh until nothing remains but his bitter bile.

The Qunari grabs his hand and yanks him from the edge, thin arms catching him as he stumbles onto the battlement. Pressed against his cheek, her skin still seems to bear traces of that cinnamon and cardamom magic. Loki shakes himself free and takes a moment to ground himself in the stone beneath his feet again.

They must find Arvaarad. And when all this is over, he’ll suggest installing some handrails.

A couple of guards stop them, demanding who they are and where they think they’re going. Grey Dove is a _terrible_ liar, and Loki is impatient to cut in and show how real persuasion is done, but she does have the control rod which she shows to the guards, she is indeed a _talassala_ , a soul healer — respectable enough — and Loki does manage to keep his mouth shut, and so they are given a simple pass token to show other guards, then they’re let through and on their way.

“You won’t get through to the fortress,” they’re told three guard posts further along the wall.

“The harbour is burning.”

“It’s the veilfire.”

But they must find Arvaarad.

Dove skids to a halt and curses when after the fourth guard post the wall changes direction and the view of the burning harbour opens to the south, the flames already licking their way across the wall, hungry for the empty plaza below and new structures to consume to the east and north. At least the dreadnaughts and merchant ships have been moored further away in the bay, protected with powerful enchantments.

A third spell, the most massive Loki has felt tonight, bristles in the air from the tall, proud Tevinter ships.

And he will never understand how non-mages feel none of it.

The reality briefly questions itself, and then shifts, materials and their properties rearranged to the purpose of the casters. Loki’s hands clench into fists as he watches another seed of veilfire blossom green on what must be the roof of the eastern temple.

"No!" Dove lets out a long string of curses in Qunlat.

Holy Andraste, how much lyrium has it cost the Tevinters to cast a spell across the whole town? How much blood of unwilling slaves?

“The children! They were all evacuated there!”

Dove needs to support herself against the parapet, disbelief and horror shining in her eyes.

The Qunari have certainly not expected a magical attack that far into the city — the temple is fortified, but there's no one there who can fight the unnatural fire. Maker’s breath, _Loki_ had not expected that it was possible to cast that far!

“They must have seen it at the fortress,” Loki hopes. “Surely they’ll send mages to deal with it.”

“I could have been there,” she whispers, still staring at the flames in the distance.

Both of them could have.

It reminds Loki they still need to find Arvaarad. And… He stares at the veilfire now raging across their path, striving to connect the harbour and the temple in one flaming inferno. It would be faster if the defenders could use the wall for sending backup, rather than the maze of streets and locked gates down in the town. He and Dove need the wall too, as it’s the straightest way to the fortress.

The Qunari takes a deep, trembling breath as she continues watching the disaster unfurl at the temple.

“ _The tide rises to devour the earth, and falls back. The sun and the stars fall to the sea one by one in their turn, only to rise again_ ,” she murmurs, reciting from the Soul Canto, trying to find some consolation in the inevitable victory of the Qun despite the very real tragedy they can only watch helplessly. “ _The tide rises, the tide falls, but the sea remains unchanged_.”

Loki watches the fire and finds that he does care, even when it’s not about him or finding his keeper, or making sure the healer stays safe.

It’s _his_ adopted city burning down there, with all its indigo and violet evenings, with all its plazas of bloody perfect tiles and violent floggings. He’s not quite ready to give it up, to cast away his life here, whatever it is. There is… a kind of brutal honesty here. There is… being enough and not having to hide.

A sense of deep-rooted faith is radiating from his companion even now, putting the world around him in perspective, and the whole fight — the Qunari, the converts, the Tevinters with their swarm of slaves and mercenaries; even the veilfire — suddenly looks like a storm on a sea: a catastrophe on the surface only and nothing note-worthy in its depths.

“Do you trust me,” he asks.

Grey Dove measures him with an amber gaze over her shoulder, tears shining on her smooth, pale cheeks.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But Brunnhilde does.”

Loki turns to her with his palms held up. “Clasp my forearms.”

She warily does, and Loki _draws_ magic through the depths of the Fade, letting all knowledge of schools and spells and frameworks be swept away in the ever-changing storm. He lets himself fall into the tide, and what remains is only his will, and purpose, and control.

He wraps his magic around both of them, careful tendrils licking their dripping, ruined clothes, their bruises and scrapes suffered against walls of narrow passages and corners barely visible in the darkness and the pouring rain. The rain and the fire will pass, but the two of them shall remain, untouched by adversity.

It is a strange feeling when Loki steps forward and realizes he’s spun his protection spell from pure entropy magic. Destruction. Chaos. Of course, it does make a dark kind of sense. Even this modified veilfire has a structure, a magical construct feeding on memories and possibilities, and so the flames shrivel and die when they touch Loki as he walks forward along the wall, their purpose ridiculed, their meaning corrupted, their hunger _denied_.

The sea may remain unchanged, but right now he is the one commanding the storm.

Slowly, the corruption spreads, and when he and Dove leave the burning harbour behind them, the fire seems to be sagging, flames darkening and collapsing in on themselves even as they continue to reach for the temple. If the fires connect, the corruption will spread, and the temple fire will die out too.

With a deep sigh Grey Dove slumps down against the parapet of the wall, face hidden in shaking hands.

“First experience with magic?” Loki teases her. The feeling that entropy has left under his skin is tantalizing and complicated, so different from the straightforward paths of elemental ice and fire spells he trained with before. He’s lightheaded. He’s awed, and, by the Maker, he’s _proud_.

Grey Dove catches her breath, looking none too happy with Loki’s methods, but they’re undeniably on the right side of the fire and much closer to the fortress and the fighting, even if due to a collapsed wall fragment — that must be what the first blast destroyed, rather than hitting a fortress battlement — they have to climb down over the rubble and continue their way through the maze of streets.

They try to avoid notice by both enemy and their own fighters, because a glimpse of a group of masked mages, calling a blinding, branched lightning upon twenty or so attackers, jolts Loki back to reality, the reality Grey Dove has been worrying about the whole night — a _saarebas_  without proper supervision will be deemed possessed and will be executed.

And then the corner of a nearby house is blasted off, the aftershocks of a primal spell rippling through the street, and without thinking Loki finds himself crouching in front of the healer, dagger in his left hand and a fireball glowing in his right.

He hurls it through the air at the first person appearing from around the crushed corner, and Loki doesn’t even know how it’s working, but it’s working, the channels of elemental magic that he’s learned to recognize and acknowledge in himself are singing with delight and power, scorching the remaining fog from his mind, alighting his senses in a blazing splendour. He hears Grey Dove calling him from behind, so he whips around and freezes her attacker, who crushes into chunks of ice when Dove brings down her staff, hard, on his helmet.

“ _Saarebas_! Stand down!”

It’s been a long night, and he's alight with magic, so Loki barely hears the sudden order, rights his footwork and calls a firestorm upon some newcomers instead, noticing from the corner of his eye how Dove casts off her broken staff and picks up a sword from a fallen mercenary's hand.

“I said — stand down!”

Dove screams behind him, two steps too far to help, and it’s another Qunari who deals with the two Tevinters when Loki’s body seizes, his next spell disrupted, and he’s forced down on his hands and knees, blunt, icy lightning tearing through his body, locking his jaws and muscles.

Two _arvaarads_ wrestle him in a sitting position, cuff his hands behind his back, strap a metal half-mask over his mouth. Loki’s screams of pain and indignation die amid the hustle and Grey Dove’s useless protestations and questions.

It’s Viddasala, and the control rod she holds in her hand answers Loki’s theoretical musings of whether these things are individually attuned to each collar, or they can be adjusted to some kind of an area effect.

She’s surprisingly business-like as she barks some orders to her people. A fighter advances on Dove, and she drops the sword, lets her hands be bound behind her back, the control rod snatched from her too. The two _arvaarads_ quickly search Loki for any weapons, and only then Viddasala releases the bind. Loki sags with relief, black spots of exhaustion and humiliated fury clouding his vision.

How did it come to this?

Where is Valkyrie? What are they going to do with Grey Dove?

They were doing so well, how did it suddenly come to this?

He tries to breathe deep when the two _arvaarads_ haul him up on his feet. Aftershocks of the body bind are still shooting through his body, paralyzing his thoughts. He tries to relax. Breathe. Stand with calm and dignity, like Dove does when they lead her away.

Viddasala leaves with the rest of her squad, rushing towards the temple, while Loki and Grey Dove are led away north. The distance is short though, and Loki has barely oriented himself after shaking off the effects of the body bind when he and Dove are pushed through a door and led down a poorly lit staircase, through a maze of empty corridors and then down some stairs again.

Finally, they’re shoved into a dark chamber.

“You have spent too much time with the mage, Talassala. You will be evaluated for rehabilitation, or it’s _qamek_ for you,” a gruff fighter tells Grey Dove. “Magic corrupts the best of us...”

They obviously have nothing to say to Loki — his fate is either beyond question or will be decided in the morning. One of the _arvaarads_  removes Loki's mask, leaves them some water and his torch in a wall sconce, and then the metal door swings shut and is locked and barred.

Loki slumps down by the wall and briefly closes his eyes to get a grasp on himself and the situation, which currently doesn’t quite bear any polite description.

“You injured?” he rasps.

The dazed Qunari shakes her head.

Loki sighs and rests his head against the stone block wall. The chamber is bare, no straw pallets, nothing. At least it’s dry and doesn’t stink of mould or rat droppings. No lyrium chains in sight either: overall, a major improvement over the Highever dungeon. Loki would give seven stars of ten.

“You…” Dove speaks up suddenly. “You didn’t act outside of your role. I did. You are here only because of Scrapper’s mistake.”

Loki only now realizes how tired he is. However, the idea that, for once, he’s not being blamed for a problem… It's almost funny.

“I don’t think that would stop them from executing me on basis of potential corruption.”

“And would you submit?”

It’s been a long night, and Loki doesn’t have the answers. He thought he’d try to throw in his lot with the Qunari, and there he is now, locked up and threatened with execution again. Dove will get punished, and it probably won’t be a simple slap on the wrist. Arvaarad is missing, and could be dead. The adrenaline of battle and the feel of magic have been negating the effects of the sleeping potion he’s been doused with for months, effects that have been building up in his body and will take more than one missed dose to get rid of completely.

But he cannot sleep, not with so much uncertainty in the air.

“ _Struggle is an illusion. There is nothing to struggle against,”_ Grey Dove murmurs, horned head bowed over her lap. “ _If you love purpose, fall into the tide. Let it carry you._ ”

(“The freedom lies in accepting your role.”)

(“If you're best at something, why would you reject it?”)

(“Watch the Qun burn me, and never doubt its truth.”)

Loki sighs, pressing his temple against the cool wall. The poetic, multilayered language still feels like a cool balm on his mind.

“ _Do not fear the dark_ ,” he continues the canto. “ _The sun and the stars will return to guide you_.”

Grey Dove smiles softly, her eyes closed with weariness. “ _You have seen the greatest kings build monuments to their glory, only to have them crumble and fade. How much greater is the world than their glory?_ ”

“ _The purpose of the world renews itself with each season._ ”

“ _Each change only marks a part of the greater whole. The sea and the sky themselves…_ ”

“ _Nothing special. Only pieces._ ”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The text in italics is canon from the [Soul Canto](http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Codex_entry:_The_Soul_Canto).  
> Also, I drew Dove :]
> 
>  


	7. Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter joyfully written to the tune of Apocalyptica's "I don't care" and the Resident Evil main theme :))
> 
> Also, quick recap in case it gets confusing: The Qunari society is ruled by a triumvirate on Par Vollen, responsible for the army, the craftsmen/worker class, and the priest class accordingly. Tamassrans are a group of priests that educate and re-educate people. I'm assuming that soul-healers (which canonically exist but I'm not sure where exactly in the hierarchy) are a sub-group of tamassrans, so I may have been calling Grey Dove a tamassran occasionally.   
> Also, about sex, because it's going to be important: The Qunari have (1) a breeding program run by the tamassrans, which doesn't include any love, just duty to the Qun, (2) the concept of love between close friends/comrades, which doesn't include any sex, and (3) casual sex, which is a punishable vice same as indulging in any other corporal pleasures, because the Qun is all about control and order, not being a slave to your physical desires. But they do recognize its... medical use as a stress relief, so, if some sex is officially prescribed, either a tamassran will volunteer, or they'll find someone of a similar affliction and appropriate gender as needed.

 

A grey, dripping wet morning has dawned over the town when, after a brief, basic questioning, Loki is brought up from the impromptu holding cell. Grey Dove they have already taken in for a more in-depth assessment that would involve a panel of _tamassrans_ , as well as the Ben-Hassrath. Loki has a dark feeling he is not going to see her again.

The air smells of soot and the aftereffects of Tevinter and Qunari spells. The Veil, already thin in the town that is the old battle ground for control over eastern Seheron, ripples around him ( ~~beckoning, promising, so much power so close, so simple to just _take_~~ ), making him numbly wonder if anyone has ever tried to actually strengthen the Veil. Is it even possible? Loki stumbles on the threshold as he's led out of the building, and an _arvaarad_ pulls him closer on his leash. Loki takes measured breaths until the feeling of deja-vu passes.

The streets are empty, and it feels like he and the two arvaarads walking with him are the only people left to witness the aftermath. 

The door of Arvaarad's house creaks miserably when they step inside. ~~(They should oil the hinges.)~~  It's not his home anymore.

There's mud in the hallway from when they had rushed back in from the street (Valkyrie putting on her armour and grabbing her greatsword and daggers, tossing a spare one to Loki, after a moment of hesitation pressing Loki's training staff in Dove's hands).

The door to Valkyrie's bedroom still hangs ajar. They don't find any of Loki's old things there. Come to think of it, Arvaarad never said she had them. She just refused to give them to Loki. It's all probably with the agents of the Ben-Hassrath now, or maybe scattered to the four winds. Does it hurt, to lose the things he brought from Asgard?  ~~(“Then am I not your mother?” Frigga asks, and Loki yanks the green cape from her arms. “You’re  not,” he snarls in her face before taking off to the stables.~~ ) Or is it a fresh start?

They go through his room and the washroom, picking up Loki's clothes and the few personal items Arvaarad has given him. Brother Genitivi's travel diary goes into the sack too, as do some of Arvaarad's folktale books in Qunlat. Apparently the Ben-Hassrath judge them harmless enough for a _saarebas_ to read. For how long? Until execution? Loki doesn't know.

The sight of the kitchen comes like a punch to the gut. The dreary grey light paints everything so cold and hopeless, a violent denial of all the bright days he has spent there, watching Valkyrie make her flatbread (He did start rolling up her sleeves eventually, because she always forgot until her hands were all dirty with flour), sipping lemon water and talking about everything and nothing in particular, because they were both just the kind of people who couldn't keep their mouths shut. A few melted candles still stick to the table, a reminder of the long evening talks Arvaarad had with Dove. A pot with cold  _maasala_ sits on the stove, a film covering its surface. 

They drank it only yesterday, Loki reminds himself. It feels like another lifetime.

He needs to leave.

Something nags at him in the hallway, and he glances over the row of pegs on the wall. Something is missing, something he's pretty sure was still there when they left for the fortress. It's Arvaarad's cornflower blue cape. Loki keeps his face passive as he notices that Dove's pale yellow umbrella is still in the corner by the door, but her azure shoulder scarf she came with that evening is missing too.

So Arvaarad survived the battle? Came back here, took some things and disappeared again? Loki's suddenly grateful for his tied hands because otherwise he'd be breaking something. He draws a shaky breath and all but runs out of the house, waiting with his back turned while his guards close the shutters and lock the door.

It's not the first time he's been betrayed by those he trusted. He's supposed to be intelligent, no?

He needs to learn his lessons.

 

***

There are four of them on the panel: Herad, who is the head of the Dangerous Questions on Seheron; Saarkas, his counterpart from the Dangerous Purpose, with his right hand Viddasala; and the _tamassran_ that taught Loki at the temple school.

As far as Loki gathers, they are in Herad's office in the closed Ben-Hassrath complex within the fortress. The narrow windows are little more than slits in the thick granite walls. Two warriors with spears and an _arvaarad_ stand by the door behind him.

"Why were you found with the soul-healer, instead of your keeper, the _arvaarad_ that used to be Brunnhilde of the Fog Warriors?" Saarkas asks, his rumbling voice filling the sparsely decorated room.

Kneeling in front of the jury, his hands still chained behind his back, Loki turns the question over in his head, and finds he has nothing to gain by lying. 

"She ordered me to protect her. She gave Grey Dove the control rod and ran off towards the fortress before either of us could stop her." 

Frowning, the _tamassran_ leans forward. "Do you know why she would give such order?"

"No." It's not his business what was or was not happening between Dove and the blighted Valkyrie. Brunnhilde. Whatever.

"Was there any untoward affection between the two? What was the nature of their relationship?" Viddasala asks.

"Define 'untoward'."

"Don't play dumb, _bas._ Did they have a sexual relationship?"

Loki can't help baring his teeth in a snarl. "How would I know? I was being drugged with a sleeping potion for months. What does their relationship have to do with this interrogation anyway?"

"Peace, Loki," Herad speaks up. "We are trying to uncover the truth of what happened."

"What were your actions after finding yourself left with Grey Dove?" Saarkas asks. Loki takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. Just seeing Viddasala, talking to her brings back bloody memories and an almost-forgotten ache in his shoulders, a wretched feeling in his forearms. He needs to put the past behind him. It's not helping him, and it doesn't matter.

In simple, curt sentences Loki recounts the night of the battle, their decision to not risk his presence at the temple and try and find Arvaarad instead. The encounter with the guards on the wall. The spell he cast to get them through the veilfire. How they were forced to descend back to the street level, the fight that ensued, and the run-in with Viddasala.

"You cast the spell that killed the fire?" the _tamassran_ wonders, and Saarkas narrows his eyes at Loki. Herad sits back, stroking his chin thoughtfully. 

"I cast a corruption spell to get us through, yes. I saw its effect spread towards the city, as well as towards the harbour."

"When Viddasala reached the temple, the fire was contaminated, dying," Herad says. "Veilfire had been burning inexorably but slowly. The roof was singed a bit, but there was no structural damage. There were no casualties. Thanks to you, apparently."

Loki blinks with surprise.

The _tamassran_ sits back in her chair with a huff. "You know my opinion of his abilities," she addresses the two senior agents. "He's been agreeable so far. Learns fast and retains the material well."

Saarkas crosses his arms over his broad chest. "And he cast that spell in a controlled manner, without using a staff. Most of our mages are mere tools of destruction, drowned men since birth. This one... seems to be the master of his magic, not the other way round. He may last longer against his nature."

"It's a mistake," Viddasala spits dismissively. "It was a mistake to entrust the keeper duty to a soul-sick convert that should have been left serving with the army, and it's a mistake to take in a foreigner mage in the ranks of the Ben-Hassrath."

"We may have an advanced means of controlling him, if need be," Saarkas offers, raising an eyebrow at his counterpart. "There's an artifact we recently obtained. My people are still studying it, but the applications seem promising."

Loki glares at the head of Dangerous Purpose but keeps his _saarebas_ mouth shut. Whatever they're talking about doesn't sound like something he should be looking forward to.

"The Qun does not suffer wastage. I'll take the risk," Herad nods decisively and gestures to the guards. This time, Loki is up on his feet before they even reach him. He's sick of being hauled around like a puppet. He's sick of being touched at all.

The _tamassran_ and Saarkas are getting up too, with Viddasala glaring daggers at Loki behind their backs. 

"If you overstep the line, _bas_ , if you as much as sneeze without permission, it's _qamek_  and the rock quarry for you, _is that clear_ ," she snarls at him in passing.

"Oh, no, Viddasala," he sneers in her face. "No. You will never lay a hand on me again." 

 

'No' is such a curiously damaging, small, simple word, after all.

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated playlist [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyq2N7nVEGUSyfhmPVSGRdFro479YvTa4), with the idea as follows:
> 
>   1. Life in the white cottage: DA2 OST "Mage Pride", Kaori Muraji "Concierto de Aranjuez"
>   2. Last night before battle: Sara Noxx "Enslave me"
>   3. Attack on Seheron: DAI OST "Dark Solas theme"
>   4. Waiting, hoping, staying buoyant: Mimi Goese "Fire and Roses"
>   5. The Ben-Hassrath: Apocalyptica ft. Adam Gontier "I don't care"
> 



	8. The Ben-Hassrath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added some tags I didn't think of before: Brainwashing, Self-Hatred, Creeping Normality (aka "a death by a thousand cuts"). Tags keep evolving as I write. If you think any other should be added, let me know!  
> But in the meantime, my dearies... *cracks knuckles*

Words have power. The metaphors of the Qun hold layers upon layers of meaning, a single symbol often worth chapters of text.

The sea.

The illusion.

The glory.

 _Asit tal-eb_ , the way things are meant to be.

Loki spends a month in quarantine, never left without supervision for even a minute, before he's deemed if not safe, then at least not actively possessed. He's reminded constantly that this is exceptional treatment earned by his trustworthy, controlled actions during the night of the attack, and because he cooperated with the Ben-Hassrath tribunal in good faith.

Loki thinks it's rather because they still think him Odin's son, still useful for their interests in the south, but he has enough common sense to not share that opinion.

Now Loki swirls the  _reth-kasaam_ staff in his hands, stalking the sandy arena of the Ben-Hassrath compound like one of those large black cats that prowl the Seheron jungle. The keeper assigned to him this week watches from the sidelines. The Qunari warrior he's been training with follows his movements with a sharp, heavy gaze.

"You are not your body," he reminds Loki. "Your body does not control you."

No, the half-mask over his face does, it controls his tongue, controls the ways he can interact with the world. Words have power, and his have been silenced.

(Asgard, and its eternal shadows come to mind.)

"You're thin," the Qunari continues. "And shorter than me. You don't have the strength to best me. So use what you have. Agility. Unexpectedness. Use that mind of yours."

(No, never strong enough, fast enough, good enough...)

But there is no malice in his trainer's words, just simple observations. It is the truth, and so Loki leashes his pride, muzzles his rage. 

No, he is not his body. He is his stupid, bleeding heart, his pathetic sentiment, and it needs to end now. The fog from the sleeping potion has dissipated weeks ago, weeks since nobody has given him any news about the Valkyrie or Grey Dove.

He has to unlearn everything he thought he knew about fighting, same as about caring. Loki reins in his emotions and takes stock of what else he has, and that is, undeniably, his magic — bound only by the three [cardinal rules](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Codex_entry:_The_Cardinal_Rules_of_Magic) and his own competence and ambition. Loki parries his trainer's attack and shifts quickly behind him, hits him sharply with the staff, but is blocked. 

(He is not Thor. He will never be Thor. It is an objective fact.)

The Ben-Hassrath are moulding his fighting style into something that fits him much better, and Loki is learning rapidly. He's always loved swift daggers and improvised weapons much more than any broadswords and war-axes.

But he's starting to finally acknowledge that he himself is the deadliest weapon, a thousand times more so than anything he can wield in his hands.

He will never need to try to be Thor again.

He is a _saarebas_ , a dangerous thing, and he and his magic are an intimately twined  _asit tal-eb_. 

He is not his body, the cursed product of abuse and rape. He is not his pale skin, dark hair, weird green eyes and lean limbs; it is all just a tool, a conduit for his magic, and when he draws on it and hits the Qunari in the chest, the raw gravitational energy burns through him like molten metal, but he pushes through the pain and forces the horned giant down on his knees, shifting the surrounding ground's weight on the Qunari's chest, stopping his breathing...

"Enough!" barks his keeper. "Release him!"

Loki complies. Loki is a good _saarebas_. 

Stripped down to the truth, his halfbreed body is just a tool.

The only question is — a tool for what purpose?

 

***

When the Ben-Hassrath are done ascertaining Loki has sufficient control of his demons, they move him from the common _saarebas_ barracks to a private room high up in a tower. Some other mages live down the hall too, but he never gets a chance to talk with them. Not that Loki wants to speak to the subdued, chained giants anyway. 

A nightly sleeping draught is still a thing. At least the Qunari have performed some kind of investigation after his initial protests and now assure Loki that this is the original recipe without any custom side-effects. 

Loki thinks the original tastes awful and almost misses The Hulk's modified concoction. 

( ~~He misses the white cottage and Arvaarad.~~ )

There is a precious sliver of ten to fifteen minutes at the end of a day, between taking the potion and it kicking in. It's the only time Loki is left to his own devices, unsupervised and unregulated.

He almost launches his book at the intruder that dares disturb him once, a Qunari  _tamassran_ in a simple white breastband and brown leather pants.

"I'm here to take care of your bodily functions, if you need it," she states plainly, dark eyes travelling down his lounging form even as her hands play absent-mindedly with the rope ornaments on her wrists. She might as well have asked if he wants anything to drink, since she's on her way to the kitchen downstairs.

Loki glares at her.

"Well, do you need my assistance?"

He sits up on the bed where he's been re-reading the account of Brother Genitivi's passage through Nevarra, and is surprised to find that, honestly, he doesn't know. He hasn't thought about that in... It feels like forever. 

~~(“I mean, it’s standard procedure,” Arvaarad frowns as she inspects her fingernails, leaning against the bathroom door while Loki runs a washcloth over his sweaty back. “I suppose I could jerk you off, or watch you do it yourself, since the monitoring rule still applies, but do you _really_ want that, buddy?” No. No, he hadn’t wanted that violation of his privacy on top of everything else.)~~

("Your relationship with demons, Desire included, is kinda my business too," Arvaarad says.)

"You're a _saarebas._ Your mind is too impressionable when relaxed, so it's not something we should leave to you and your hand," the Qunari in his room repeats his keeper's arguments from more than half a year ago. Something knots in Loki's stomach at the thought. How did Arvaarad manage to dress the same vile idea in so much more sense and... humour? humanity?

"How do you even know I prefer women?" he asks to fill the awkward pause.

The Qunari shrugs lightly. "It's a statistic assumption. I can ask my boss to send up some guy instead, if you like."

Loki shakes his head. He has some ideas about what he likes, something he's never had an opportunity to explore back in Asgard, and definitely not something he'd like to experiment with as part of a clinical relief procedure the Qunari are offering.

"That won't be necessary," he utters as politely as he can manage. "I'm fine, thank you for your concern."

The _tamassran_ shoots him a skeptical glance. "Are you sure? You agree with the alternative?"

~~("I'm not letting you jerk me off as some part of your demon management process!" — "Then no arbitrary hanky-panky either!" — "Yes, fine, just... Ugh! How does your Qun even come up with these ideas?")~~

"No touching myself unsupervised? Yes, it's clear," Loki growls.

"Now, if you please..." He waves at her with his book, and she thankfully takes the hint and leaves, door clicking quietly behind her.

Loki stares at the text with unseeing eyes.

What does it say about his humanity, half-arsed as it is, if he truly, honestly hasn't felt any desire in months?

(What does it say about his intelligence if he misses his traitor of a keeper?)

Not wanting to be touched by strangers would be understandable, but not even thinking about it, not entertaining any fantasies?

He stares down at his spindling body, his thin arms and gangly legs, his sickly pale skin and spidery fingers. An atrocity since before its conception, it's not something that deserves even a fantasy.

Loki curls on his side and returns to "In Pursuit of Knowledge", hoping to finish the chapter before sleep claims him.

 

***

The Qun teaches questioning what one sees until the truth emerges, until everything is stripped down to its objective essence.

Looking back —  _forcing_ himself to finally look back — so much in Asgard is rotten to the core: the hypocritical, cruel Chantry teachings, the narrow-minded court, the pointless, violent entertainment, the backstabbing, blackmailing dealings between Odin and the neighbouring arls and banns, the conspiracies with malcontent nobles in Orlais. The fear of mages, and never mentioning the children that have been taken away by the Chantry. The gossip, the open secrets of servant abuse, and mistresses taken on the side. The hypocrisy of same sex relationships, the mere implication of which is a grave insult to any noble at the court and no big deal among the common people. The bloody foundation the whole teyrnir stands upon, something that Thor will probably never realise, the arrogant fool that he is, putting Odin on a pedestal side by side with the holy Andraste.

Loki sheds illusions like a snake sheds its skin, and even without his own farce of a life added to the picture, Loki starts to think he would gladly watch Asgard burn.

Everyone in the south strives for personal happiness, he muses, crouching by some bush that blooms with mesmerising scent in the balmy night. His squad mates, of his first assignment with the Ben-Hassrath, are barely visible shapes in the dark jungle nearby. The Qunari, on the other hand, want to succeed as a group, as a whole; to establish order and truth,  _asit tal-eb_. They work for the greater good, and it's both amazing and terrible to be a part of. The Qun is not a path to _happiness._ It offers purpose, a sense of belonging, a sense of accomplishment instead, and, as he waits for the signal, Loki wonders if it is enough, or if it's another illusion he needs to leave behind.

The task tonight is to take out a small camp of Fog Warriors the Ben-Hassrath suspect in collaborating with the Tevinter Imperium. 'Suspect' is a word Loki uses liberally in this case. He doesn't doubt the agents have dug down to the actual truth of the matter, but it doesn't mean the attack warrants any other reason than opposition to the Qun.

He doesn't pity the _basra_. Their last attack on Seheron almost destroyed a hospital. Their information, passed on to the Tevinter magisters, cost almost a hundred lives in the recent attack; would have cost more if not for Loki's corruption spell against the veilfire. In fact, the whole frustrating situation he's in can be traced back to the Fog Warriors, and the Tevinters, and the thrice-damned Arvaarad.

(Or the Ben-Hassrath. Or Odin. Or maybe Loki's own pathetic, emotional choices, since he seems on a roll with the truth tonight.)

He ignores it.

The leader gives the signal, a series of quiet tongue clicks that are barely audible in the murmuring jungle night. Loki's keeper and a few warriors on his other side jump up from the undergrowth, masking cloths removed from their lanterns in a flash. Ghostly blue lyrium light shows the way as they break through the blossoming bushes and into the tiny camp where some twenty Fog Warrior fighters have been lounging around a low fire.

Weapons are drawn in seconds, but Loki is faster still, and two fighters drop their suddenly icy swords with a cry, clutching at their frost-bitten hands. Another one gets impaled on the shards of ice Loki conjures as a barrier around him. Elemental magic is a child's game for Loki by now. 

His keeper calls out to him, and together they move forward into the thick of the battle, with Loki stunning the opponents, rending their minds with horrendous nightmares, paralysing them on spot as the native islanders' worst fears emerge in front of their eyes. His keeper only needs to watch his back and, having more experience with the Qunari fighting tactics, to direct Loki where he's needed the most. 

Loki doesn't think. He revels in the raw magic flowing through his veins, the instinctual power at the tips of his fingers, his to command, his to take vengeance from the useless, treacherous heathens living like rats in the forest, scheming with the damned Tevinters...

He crushes a fighter into the ground, but Loki's not thinking, he just _is_ , he moves and acts, and the magic flows through him wild and free and powerful, like it was always meant to be, _asit tal-eb_.

Their struggle is useless. _Anaan esaam Qun_ , the victory is in the Qun. The pathetic idiots would be wise to acknowledge the inescapable, to stop their meaningless, ludicrous fight...

But Loki's not thinking, meaning those are not his thoughts. He shakes his head, trying to clear it.

When did this battle, and the success of the Qunari, become so personal for him?

~~(“You have your beautiful mind, my darling. Never give it away.")~~

He's been taught... better.

He catches a blue flash of lyrium on a broadsword flashing downwards, and where has he seen it before?

The smell of blood and shit mix with the heady fragrance of the white-flowered shrubs gleaming in the dark, and then Loki's feet carry him closer to the fireplace (another ice blast, another branched lightning at a warrior, and a vision cast at an archer, showing her hands rotting off her bones), and then a sight of something small on the ground stops him with the force of a brick wall.

It's a flatbread, trampled into the ash and mud.

(She had to bake it herself, because it was never available from the street vendors and army cooks.)

It was not available, because it had never been a Qunari thing, like Loki had assumed.

It's the bread of the Fog Warriors he's learned to love. It's their folktales he knows by heart now, it's their Valkyrie he's missing, it's...

It's their blood he's spilling. Blood of real, living people — who tried to kill other real, living people, civilians and children. Frigga did not raise him a killer! How did he come to be in the middle of all this?

A flash of blue lyrium, and Loki remembers how these people have been betrayed by the Tevinters before, knows the Qunari saved his Valkyrie's life, knows the whole damn island has been a blood bath for ages, the Veil thin from all the suffering and murder (and power, so much power, so close — beckoning, promising, so simple to just _take_ ), a never-ending fight between the Fog Warriors and the Qunari, and the Tevinters, and what is _he_  even doing here?

All this, in the name of what?

When did he agree to this war?

In the name of what glorious purpose?

Shaken, Loki doesn't notice the archer nocking an arrow and letting it fly before she escapes with the last survivors into the jungle. 

His thick leather-and-metal _saarebas_ collar is what stops it from going through his throat.

 

***

It takes some time (three and a half of his ten-minute days), but eventually Loki manages to nibble open the window in his room. The warm evening air, a honey-sweet mix of the blooming courtyards in Seheron below, and the fresh, salty tang from the sea caress his face through the metal bars.

Loki brings over a pillow from his bed and folds himself as comfortably as he can into the narrow windowseat. He's aching from the physical exertion of a day's training and the increasingly complex spells he's learning to channel. He could be content with his progress. But Loki stares out the window, unable to shake the sense of blood on his hands, to concentrate on any productive line of thought, so instead he numbly catalogues the various polearms, swords, daggers he's been working with today; their names in Qunlat; their advantages and disadvantages against different opponents and in various tactical situations.

Knowing what he believes in anymore would be so much more useful right now. Retaining that one bit of self-righteous illusion would have been a consolation, a mercy.

What if he had remained blind to his adoption and his origin, would that have been a mercy too?

It's been more than two months with the Ben-Hassrath, four days since the attack on the Fog Warriors. He realises the summer solstice is only weeks away. While on Seheron, Loki has missed Satinalia and Wintersend already.

(They did have a small First Day celebration with the Valkyrie, Dove and The Hulk, welcoming the new year with a heavy-laden table of simple but hearty food.)

(On a first description, it should have felt like Asgard — if the Qun allowed any alcohol, if The Hulk didn't hate talking about fighting, and if Dove had any fighting experience to share; it was a surprisingly mellow celebration.)

 ~~(It was warm. It was considerate.)~~ (It _was_ warm and considerate, and then Arvaarad went and betrayed them, him and Dove both.)

What is next? He's being made ready. For what? Has the time come for the Ben-Hassrath to send him kill Odin? Other nefarious plans to ensure the victory of the Qun?

(If that victory is so inevitable, like Dove believed, does it have to be so bloody?)

But if this is not his war, then what is? What does he _want_? If he were free, where would he go, what would he do?

"Your teachers are pleased with your progress," Herad interrupts Loki's jumbled thoughts.

In his room, he's free to speak, but Loki merely side-eyes the senior agent standing in the door. There was no question in his words, no instruction he should react to. There is a certain power in doing nothing when an action is expected, though Loki knows Herad is beyond such games.

"Your teachers offered you the use of a mage's staff today. You refused. Why?"

Direct and to the point, and not concerned with anyone's cognitive dissonance problems as long as they remain a powerful, finely-tuned instrument in the hands of the Qun. Loki smirks. 

"Free casting offers more opportunities."

"You're afraid," Herad says.

Loki scoffs. "Of what?"

"Of losing again." Herad walks across the room, sits down on Loki's narrow bed by the wall, pushing away a few shirts and the dog-eared copy of "In Pursuit of Knowledge" by one Ferdinand Genitivi. "Isn't that so?"

Loki watches the senior agent, and shrugs a shoulder.

"That is a reasonable preference."

"There are times when you cannot win," Herad says. "When the stakes are stacked too high against you. What will you do then? What will you do when the fear sets in?"

Loki remains silent. It is a good — useful — question, one he would like to ponder carefully the next time they give him a bit of downtime.

"What does the Qun say?" he asks instead.

Herad takes a moment before responding, his heavy, horned head bowed in thought.

"Fear blinds you, same as anger," he says. "It builds walls around your heart, making you believe in what isn't. That you are alone, unworthy, cast out to the wolves. It creates this lie inside your head, and you lose sight of the truth: that everyone has a purpose. Clouds in the sky don't have to prove anything to anyone. All you have to do is strive for mastery over who you already are."

"The Ben-Hassrath approve of your progress," he continues. "In a few days you will leave with a group heading for Orlais. Your task will be explained to you tomorrow."

Herad is almost at the door, when Loki's question stops him.

"And what will they call me? What _is_ my purpose?"

A hint of unease wafts from the Qunari, though Loki would have never guessed it from sight alone.

"You're the harbinger of chaos," he says in the common tongue. "The corrupter of balance.  _Aquntaari_."

 

***

Next day he's kept busy until the early evening, and then there's another leash, another pushing and prodding, a winding staircase, and then another dungeon. Loki gives it only five stars of ten, because it's dank and dark, and because he's pissed about the halfmask again (still) and about having to navigate the narrow, high steps with his hands chained behind his back. He takes away three more stars, when he sees a block of wood in the middle of the room, with a metal clamp fixed to its surface.

"Kneel." One of the Qunari fighters that led him down the stairs nudges Loki forward, indicating where he wants him.

Loki feels his hackles rising, he won't be pushed around like some sack of hay.

(“The freedom lies in accepting your role.”)

A wealth of good it did to Arvaarad, to him, and to Dove. 

("You're the harbinger of chaos.")

What does it even mean? What do they want from him?

("Think about it. Open your mind.")

To more pretty quotes by Koslun, by Arvaarad, by Herad, all ringing in his head like cymbals? To words with whole chapters worth of meaning that nobody gives him any time to _think_ about anymore? No, his mind shall be only his, that is what Frigga taught him, and what the Qun demands; that is the _truth_ , and he'll never again settle for less. He's supposed to get the instructions about that Orlais mission, not some... whatever inane new procedure this is.

But he's pushed roughly to his knees behind the block of wood.

("What will you do when the fear sets in?")

Some other agents trail into the room, taking positions along the wall amid flickering torches. His keeper of the week is there too. And there's Herad, who should explain the fucking meaning of all this, before someone decides he's... 

Of course, some inbred bastard of a blighted bronto decides just that, and paralysing lightning shoots through Loki as his twitching hands are uncuffed and pulled forward, never mind the cramps and the agony, and oh, how Loki wants to wring their all necks, it does bring to mind the spellwork he worked out ages ago... His forearms are locked down with the rough steel band, furnished with lyrium runes, and he'll be damned if he hasn't seen some of those markings before...

"Sit still," Herad growls at him, releasing Loki from the bind.

"Peace, Aquntaari," someone greets him. "There's nothing to struggle against."

Oh, you don't say. Loki glares at the newcomer, the senior agent of Dangerous Purpose, as he tries to focus his scattered, jumbled thoughts, the residual shivers from the body-bind reacting violently with the lyrium engravings.

There's a plain, elongated parcel wrapped in rough leather in Saarkas' hands, and Loki doesn't like the looks of it one bit. And of-fucking-course there's Viddasala now, shutting the door and waving at some of the fighters to move further into the room. The dungeon loses its last two stars in Loki's assessment.

"This is highly unusual," Herad starts, and he sounds thoughtful at best. "But it is an opportunity nevertheless."

"It may well be the key to a victorious future," Saarkas smiles. 

He carefully unwraps the object, handling it with thick leather gloves. It's an elegant golden spear or a sceptre, with a weird, gleaming blue sphere of unknown material wrought at the tip of it, and Loki gets a feeling that touching it with any part of his body would not be a brilliant idea. 

"Aquntaari has shown admirable cooperation," Herad meanwhile explains to the other agents. "His noble birth, which is so important to the _basra_ , and his intelligence make him a prime choice for enacting a series of events for further advancement of the Qun in southern Thedas; I will not go into details, as his mission does not directly concern you."

"But he's a mage and needs a keeper," Saarkas continues, stepping slowly around Loki's kneeling form. Behind the mask and the lyrium bindings, Loki can only watch him.

The spear in Saarkas' hands pulses with powerful, foreign magic.

"The Mind Stone should allow us to keep an eye on you from a distance, monitoring your thoughts for any threats of possession, and communicating with you, if necessary." Saarkas looks down upon him almost kindly. "You're one of us, Aquntaari. You'll never have to be alone again."

("What will you do when the fear sets in?")

Viddasala rolls her eyes, and then she steps forward, stands behind Loki and reaches to wrap her hands around his forehead.

Loki flinches violently, he doesn't want her touching him, he doesn't want Saarkas turning the glowing blue menace stick on him, doesn't want to look at it, but Viddasala's grip is like iron.

("What will you do when the fear sets in?")

Loki tries to breathe deep, tries to think about the eternal, indubitable sea and its tides.

The blue mesmerises.

No. His mind is his. He shall be in control of it. 

The blue captivates.

(“If you're best at something, why would you reject it?”)

Disrupting the status quo, that _is_  what he's apparently best at, and he's a _saarebas_ , a dangerous thing, and he's had enough of this whole nonsense, of thoughts that are not his, of pretty quotes, of words, and memories, and constant chains and muzzles and surveillance. He won't suffer any pathetic zealot holding him down!

Loki finds he's too pissed to let the fear set in.

His magic is his, his power is his, his mind is his, _asit tal-eb!_

The tip of the golden spear touches his forehead, and then Pride brushes against his consciousness, and a seething Rage demon is on its heels, pulling at the engraved clamp holding down his magic, and — yes, the runes are different, and the demons are still there, or maybe they and Loki are just too good friends by now, or maybe it's his own churning anger that has nothing to do with spirits, but he's DONE, he's finished, he won't be _touched_ , he won't be _manipulated_ , he won't be HELD AGAINST HIS WILL.

The blue pulls at him, but Loki knows there's a power in his veins that is his for the taking, that's strong enough to resist the stupid spear and the lyrium. He finds he doesn't care for the cost anymore.

The Veil is thin in Seheron, and Pride is strong, and there is so much power, so close — beckoning, promising, so simple to just TAKE _—_  and finally Loki _does_.

He doesn't need anyone's fucking permission to be who he is. 

He only needs his magic and his will, and if there's blood,

there is magic,

and where there's magic,

there's probability,

mutability,

the reality questioning itself and Loki's position in it here and now...

He hears a muffled cry as Viddasala and Saarkas are both thrown off their feet by a violent shockwave.

He sees blood welling up on his forearms where his thrashing has torn his pale skin against the rough iron clamp, which now hangs uselessly from the side of the wooden block.

He won't be held where he doesn't want to be, all rules be damned. 

His last thought is of Arvaarad and the old dragon god of freedom, turned to chaos, and...

 

A sky full of stars...?

 

 

" _Fasta vass_ , where did _you_ come from??!"

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author regrets nothing... but does take constructive criticism and other forms of feedback :)


	9. Dorian

 

He blinks open his eyes, and stumbles out of a bed. Bare feet hit startled stone, hands grasp for balance against a wall. For a dizzying moment, the world feels wrong, too clean lines and dark green gravity, bright angles and spicy light... He's wearing only grey, silky drawstring pants, a shiny touch on a body that doesn’t feel his.

He shakes his head and licks his parched lips. There's a nasty taste in his mouth, and a sluggishness, a weakness in his limbs like after a long illness.

The room is built to human proportions — that’s the first thing that snags his fuzzy attention. Reddish evening light is pouring in through tall windows on one side of the room. The wide bed is made of rich black hardwood, the floors are smooth, creamy marble, inlaid with black stripes and patterns. The walls are clad with salmon-pink silk with golden vignettes, dark wooden panels, and white gypsum mouldings at the ceiling. A massive bookshelf covers the entire opposite wall. A round dark table stands by the window with four chairs around it and some papers scattered on it. Every single, high quality detail screams he's no longer on Seheron, and Loki crouches by the wall, trying to make sense of it all.

Technically, this is not the first time he's woken since... Loki swallows thickly, turning over the ugly fact in his mind: since turning to blood magic. It must have worked instinctively, the knowledge supplied by Pride meshing with his magical reflexes; but what happened after?

He vaguely remembers a starlit sky, and worried voices, thinks he remembers the soothing touch of healing spells and the taste of a basic health potion. He thinks he remembers a different place before that... With blurred contours and muted, impossible,  _fragrant_  colours that the mind refuses to understand. Blossoming trees full of eerie birdsong that tastes like  _cherries_. Loki shakes his head.

There is no explanation that makes sense. He needs more facts.

Loki steps carefully to the window. The room seems to be on the second floor, overlooking a lush garden. He recognises some of the plants from Seheron, so the latitude must not be too different, but... The  _saambak_  has already gone to small, green fruit. A deep purple  _leeli-eva_  is attempting to strangulate a cast-iron pergola further in the garden, and it was supposed to bloom only after the summer solstice. A tight knot settles uncomfortably in Loki's stomach as he realises he's missing whole weeks of his life.

The door handle clicks quietly behind him, and he twists around, hand outstretched and ready to incinerate an enemy, but it's only an elven servant with a tray of potions. 

She starts visibly, tray almost falling from trembling hands, but regains her composure admirably.

"Forgive me, sir, I didn't knock." She sketches a small curtsy, large green eyes downcast under a mop of reddish brown hair. "I thought you were still sleeping."

He nods, and it takes his sluggish brain a moment to realise he's able to speak.

(Where is his mask?)

"Where am I?" His voice is weak from disuse, and the common tongue tastes strange after months of speaking Qunlat.

The girl just shakes her head. Hurriedly, she places the tray on the nightstand by the bed and within moments is back at the door.

"Please wait!" she entreats. "The young master will be here shortly, and he will explain," she waves at the potions, "and everything", and then she scampers.

An invisible shimmer passes over the door, and Loki knows without trying that the room is locked. He had felt a similar spell on the windows.

He clears his throat, and that's when he realises his heavy collar is missing too. His neck feels naked to his touch, and for an infinitesimal moment, it is the most untethered, weightless, horrifying abyss of a feeling, but then he takes a deep breath, and lets it wash over himself.

Loki sits back on the bed to wait for this "young master", because he needs answers, something clear and tangible. It's possible he'll need to fight him, or to somehow get rid of him before he can attempt to undo the magical locks. 

Or maybe Loki's no prisoner, and maybe the master of this mansion means him well, but he won’t, he _can't_ believe that. Every time he finds himself caring, he's betrayed, over and over again, left vulnerable, at the mercy of someone else who will just try to use him. 

Dark spots are swimming in his vision from the meagre physical effort it took him to walk around the room, and, Maker, he's so tired. Tired of trusting, of hoping, and always trying to fit in, trying to find his place, his people... He just wants to be free of it all. To be alone out on the road, with nothing but his magic and ancient constellations above him, and he'll fight tooth and nail whoever is holding him back this time... He will not be controlled again. 

"Glad to see you're up," a pleasant tenor voice jerks Loki from the doze he's involuntarily,  _stupidly_  slipped into, and he jerks awake in a world that is, for a moment, too real once again.

A dark-haired man is leaning carelessly against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, a mage's staff slung over his back. He is clean shaven, of medium build. Some kind of a sheetlike white and teal tabard, adorned with an absurd amount of buckles, is carelessly draped over a darker silk shirt. Dark velvet pants and sturdy boots hug shapely legs. He doesn't look older than twenty.

"Are you the owner of the house?" Loki's voice sounds stronger this time, but probably he should rethink his blunt,  _Qunari_ , manner of speaking.

"Pah! I wouldn't know what to do with it," the man chuckles, grey eyes sparkling with amusement.

"I'm Dorian, of House Pavus," he offers with a slight jut of his chin. "This fine estate belongs to my mentor, Magister Gereon Alexius."

Magister?

The younger mage pretends he hasn't noticed Loki tense, and instead saunters over to the table, sitting down with something of a jungle cat's grace in his movements.

"Now, nobody here knows anything about your own fine person," he grins, "but can we agree to not kill each other quite yet? It would be such a waste."

No, the Qun does not suffer waste. Loki forces himself to relax, though the sudden memory of the doctrine irritates him, as does his own reflexive compliance with its reason.

"I'm in Tevinter Imperium."

Dorian nods and then tilts his head, curiosity dancing in sharp, intelligent eyes. 

"This is the city of Asariel. Judging from that torn collar you were clutching when you suddenly appeared in the garden, you come from a Qunari-controlled territory? Seheron? Rivain?"

Torn? Who tore off his collar? How? When? What does he mean, “suddenly appeared in the garden”, _how_ did he come there?

"We healed the bruises as best we could," Dorian says, and, overwhelmed by the multitude of questions, Loki snaps.

"Keep your pity. I don't owe you any answers. Nobody asked you to help me, so I owe you nothing! Now, am I your prisoner, or am I free to go?"

Unperturbed, Dorian just cocks an eyebrow and shoots a sardonic look at Loki's half-naked form as he sits bristling on the bed.

"I have questions. Gereon has questions. Livia has questions." Dorian waves his hand in the air and rolls his eyes. "Yes, we'd like some answers. But no, you're not a prisoner. Where exactly do you think you're going and how far you're going to get are another matter, but suit yourself."

He could incinerate the patronising Tevinter lordling where he sits, the power is not even beyond the Veil anymore. It's pulsing in his blood, in a toxic, tar-like soup with all his rejections and betrayals and his slighted pride...

That power is his, a fucking  _asit tal-eb,_ comes the tired, inescapable, _goddamn_ answer ingrained in the marrow of his bones. It’s his storm to command. Loki blinks away the dark spots in his vision and forces himself to relax once more. 

"I am... grateful for your assistance. I shall endeavor to answer your questions to the best of my ability, if you furnish me with the means and information so I could be on my way as soon as possible."

Dorian watches him thoughtfully for a long moment.

"Where to though?"

Where to indeed. It's not safe for a lone traveler in Tevinter. Slavery is legal in the Imperium, and the roads can be full of bandits. And he's just some nameless southerner without connections. Despite his Asgardian and Ben-Hassrath training, his actual fighting experience is still quite limited. He may not like it, but it is an objective truth.

"Nevarra," he decides. It's the closest country beyond the border, unless he fancies the inhospitable wastelands of Anderfels.

Dorian shrugs. "No objections from me. I hear it's pretty in the summer. Whatever sad and rainy misunderstanding it is they call 'summer'..."

Loki nods. He doesn't trust the mage, but it is what it is — a tide to fall into. He leans against the headboard and closes his eyes, knowing with a sense of dismay what Dorian's first question must be. He will not lie. And he cannot reveal his true identity either, because,  _of course_ , it's been his luck to end up among Tevinters, and what is his real identity anymore, to begin with?

"Call me Aquntaari," he sighs, and then reaches for the tray of advanced rejuvenating potions left on the nightstand.

"So what exactly is this one for?"

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mkay, so if any MCU people are wondering, [this](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/a1/74/80/a17480cab7d9b21a7a00496f3db84569.jpg) is Dorian at ~30 (art by Sirinne). I assume he didn't have that moustache at 18. Yes, Loki's guess about his age is a bit off. Loki's wrong about a number of things in this fic...  
>   
> Updated playlist [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyq2N7nVEGUSyfhmPVSGRdFro479YvTa4), with the idea as follows:  
> * The Ben-Hassrath: Marilyn Manson - Resident Evil main title  
> * The jungle and the Mind Stone: Acylum - The Enemy (Kopf durch die Wand)  
> * Dorian: 2WEI - Survivor
> 
> Feedback always welcome! :)


	10. Asariel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Lady Livia Alexius](https://www.nndb.com/people/223/000136812/lindsay-duncan-1-sized.jpg) (my headcanon anyway).

The next morning, Loki meets the master of the house, Magister Gereon Alexius, who just so happens to be a professor of thaumaturgy at the Circle of Minrathous, pushing the boundaries of conventional magic. His wife and research partner Lady Livia specialises in the Veil, and their absent son Felix is currently studying mathematics at the University of Orlais. Livia has four apprentices back in Minrathous, and Dorian, with his magical talent and inquisitive mind, fits right in as the only apprentice of Gereon's.

It looks too good to be true, but a part of Loki wants to scream anyway. 

Oh, to live in a country where being a mage is not a crime!Where scholars of magical theory are free to research to their heart’s content, free to openly take apprentices and not have to hide from the Chantry, not be imprisoned in any circles; free to live their lives in beautiful, spacious mansions. _Loki_  would have fit in perfectly, had he been born a Tevinter noble, an Altus mage, not some shameful, rejected bastard of White River, some lied to, scorned, betrayed joke of Asgard.

It is what it is, and it shall not define him, the other part of Loki reminds him, and he ducks his head and tucks in the delicious meals they serve him to help him regain his strength. It's all ripples — potential lies and illusions and trivial details — on the surface of a bottomless sea of truth. He is... in charge of his own success or failure. He  _is_ , and he doesn't have to… to prove anything to anyone, just — _blast and damnation_ — he just has to be the best version of himself, and it makes him FUME with _rage_ that, after _all_ that Arvaarad and the Ben-Hassrath have done to him, the Qun is still so deeply rooted in his mind, still leashes his temper, grounds his magic,  _channels_  his magic with a force he had never thought possible before.

He _hates_ it, but when the evening comes, he blasts apart the locking spell on the door and the windows, because ~~his new keepers~~ his _hosts_ have been too busy interrogating him about his magic to take care of it, and _because he can_.

The complex potions on his nightstand are of envious quality, but there is one draught missing, and it’s hours before Loki falls asleep, on satin bedsheets damp with shameful tears.

 

*

On the second day, sitting in the pergola under the heavy, purple blossoms of _leeli-eva_ (What _is_ it called in the common tongue?) and watching Lady Livia coming across the lawn, dressed in rich silks and exquisite black lace, a sheaf of clean parchment and writing implements in her hands, Loki takes a deep breath and faces the simple fact that he's changed.

He doesn’t care how juicy and sweet are the oranges on the table before him, it’s just food, it serves a purpose. He doesn’t care what he wears, as long as it allows him freedom of movement and preferably covers the scars on his arms and shoulders. He's been starved and drugged and beaten, and his head messed with for almost a year now. Beautiful as it is — because he can still see it, in a detached, abstract kind of way — the material wealth of the magister's household fails to impress him like it once would have.

Instead he now notices the shadows of quiet slaves tending to the garden and doing the housework, hears their silent steps in the early morning hours in the yard. They seem to be treated decently, but still Loki finds himself watching for signs of abuse on their wrists and necks. He doesn't see any, but it doesn't mean he will stop looking.

He does admit he's made a deal with his demons, when Gereon asks during another ~~interrogation~~ discussion held over lunch. Livia presses her lips in a line, and Gereon shakes his head in warning. Dorian rants at him about what a slippery road blood magic is and how the world doesn't need that kind of risk. But at least they provide Loki with some scrolls and schematics, so for the first time in his life Loki can  _learn_  how blood magic works and what it can do. Tevinter is famous for it, after all, even if this particular household is wary of its temptations.

The theory is… interesting.

He decides to take what is offered, and then some, when he starts asking questions in return. At first, Gereon is cautious — it was not their deal that Loki would want any information from _them_ — but, well, the inquisitive, well-spoken Aquntaari is a Fereldan apostate who has never received any formal Circle training, and his time with the Qunari means that even his questions are _delightfully_  out of the box, and soon Livia has covered the entire dining table with her schematics, Dorian spills some powdered sugar from the dessert over the parchments, Gereon absent-mindedly brushes it off with his sleeve, and soon they’re all arguing about the possibility that what if the Veil is not something inherent to the world, and what if there used to be a time when magic could be sourced from the entire immutable reality, and now blood magic is the only school that can still do that?

Livia argues that there are no proofs, no mentions, no _implications_ in any lore about there not being a Veil, and Loki counters by citing the frankly _ridiculous_ number of wonders in Fog Warrior folktales, things that cannot be explained by conventional or even blood magic, things that _might_ imply that there was a time when magic was much more accessible and powerful.

“A renowned warrior turned into a grass snake by a vengeful spirit; a miller’s daughter with no previous track in magic spinning straw into gold; a bronto herder cheating a ‘devil’, what if it’s not just the storyteller’s imagination but a memory of a different world?”

“It’s just fairy tales,” Livia scoffs, “on par with all that Dalish nonsense, and how do you even know Seheron folklore?”

“Do not walk in the leash of your assumptions, Lady Livia. Face the facts. Then act on them.”

(He doesn’t know anything of the Dalish lore. But if there truly was a time when there was no Veil, does it mean there was no Fade either? Or that it could be entered?)

(The Chant of Light, of course, claims that first there was the Fade, and then the Maker created the immutable world. But Loki doesn’t put much trust in the veracity of that manipulated, twisted piece of shit writing.)

(Who could benefit though, from hiding a truth like that?)

“The lad has a point.” Gereon taps a quill thoughtfully against his nose and then jots down some notes. His research specialises in the constraints of time and space, and this _is_ an interesting angle he hasn’t considered before.

(If the Veil is the key to subverting one of the cardinal rules of classical magic, where does the blood magic stand in such case?)

( ~~What if another rule can be broken?~~ )

Dorian listens, finished with the plate of rosewater sweets and now slowly licking the powdered sugar from his fingers.

“I wonder who would benefit from erasing a pre-Veil world from all records,” he says.

Loki blinks at him, surprised at the similarity of their thinking. Livia sits back, thin fingers steepled as she narrows her eyes, running the hypotheses in that shrewd mind of hers. Gereon chuckles and shakes his head, and makes some more notes. Dorian’s eyes travel to his mentor, and he frowns.

Loki notices, because perhaps he had been staring at that bit of sugar still stuck on the Tevinter's face.

 

*

On the third day, Dorian caves in and agrees to teach Loki how to make veilfire for use in lamps and torches. He’s appalled when Loki tells him of its use in bombs by the Tevinter army and denies any knowledge of such spells. For all his cocksure, cavalier attitude, the younger mage is surprisingly idealistic.

Loki refuses to believe it, and so he leans closer to investigate the shadows in Dorian's eyes as they sit across each other in the plush windowseat of the spacious library. The Teviner masks it well, with self-assured arrogance and light-hearted jokes, but Loki's a  _saarebas_ , and soft tendrils of entropy are forever at his fingertips, and he  _knows_  the longing, the anger, the sense of rejection rolling off the young mage when he lets down his guard. Not everything is fine in Dorian's world, not everything in Asariel, in Tevinter is as perfect as it seems.

But his principles seem true enough.

Nevertheless, Loki decides to not share his vague guesses about how he ended up in their garden ("No, I don't remember anything." — "Surely you must have some theories, assumptions?" — "No. I'm sorry it's not the answer you wanted.").

But he _needs to know_ , to remember what happened, and by the fourth day he finally admits that the old meditation practices he was taught at the temple might be his only option.

(He does ask Dorian if perchance the Tevinters know any mind training techniques, possibly stolen from the elves before crushing ancient Arlathan? No, only veilfire? Dorian just laughs.)

So the Qun it is.

Admitting it and actually doing it are different things, however.

 

*

It doesn’t feel his, the face that stares back at him from the silver-framed mirror of the spacious, marble bath house on the fifth day of his sojourn in the Alexius estate. Loki touches the reflection of his pale forehead, runs it gingerly over the shiny black hair that falls past his shoulders. Those weird forest-green eyes and smooth, beardless chin should have clued him in long ago that he’s not exactly human. Nevertheless, this is him. His body does not define him, but… well, it is his. And it has served him reasonably well, so maybe he should just... stop? Stop wasting time wishing it to be something else?

He doesn’t need to compare to anyone’s aesthetic expectations, Asgardian or other. He used to be… _enough_ , back in the white cottage.

What if he can still be that?

He lets his hand fall from the mirror. Fucking sentimentality, it’s going to be the death of him.

Loki folds his silk bathrobe on the smooth marble tiles and slowly lowers himself into the crystal-clear, hot indoor pool fed by underground springs. He closes his eyes as lets himself float in the water.

_Fall into the tide. Let it carry you._

The ripples caused by his movement splash quietly against the edges. Servants murmur somewhere at the back of the house. Being left to his own devices still feels strange, aimless, and so his thoughts once more run in circles about the fragrant colours and the cherry birdsong, and the soft, green gravity. He needs to remember more. Knowledge is power, and he needs more of it before his demons come to cash in on the deal, before the Ben-Hassrath figure out he's still alive...

 _Open your mind_ , sounds the eternal mantra, the bright comet trail of a memory left by his thrice-damned Valkyrie.

Loki wants to hate it all, the cold rationality that’s taken root in his mind. The staff-less spells and the thrum of power just underneath his skin remind him of everything he went through on Seheron, but it has become an intrinsic part of him, same as the blood in his veins, same as the demon whispers in his head. The memory of Seheron is settled inexorably in his bones and sinews.

It’s easy to hate the scars on his arms and back, easy to feel bitterness and betrayal at Arvaarad’s disappearance, rage at the Ben-Hassrath attempt to control him through the Mind Stone.

But how do you rage at a smell of cinnamon and cardamom, ancient tales about dragons and tricksters? How do you denounce carefree afternoons spent sparring in a lush backyard, the life-giving taste of lemon water in your parched throat and the feel of raw entropy magic rushing through your whole body? How do you fall out of love with a language as multilayered as an Antivan assassin’s motives, as ripe with symbols and metaphor as a night sky is full of stars and the legends that they tell? 

He cannot unlearn the names of the plants specific to Seheron, the names of the weapons, all the rogue fighting tricks and tactics he's been taught so far above and beyond the classical warcraft he'd studied back in Asgard. He cannot say with absolute conviction how he hates he has been treated, and he hates himself for that inability. Hates himself for his weakness, for allowing them to play tricks with his mind, for leaving muddy footprints of the Qun and Seheron all over his already battered soul.

Clenching his teeth, Loki brutally shuts down that self-pitying, pathetic line of thought and pulls himself out of the pool. For the first time in forever, he  _wants_  to think about Asgard,  _wants_  to miss his home. But instead his hands itch for a  _reth-kasaam,_ and so he towels himself dry, and goes to find Dorian. The mage has been pestering him about a sparring match for days.

He takes the staff he's offered "to equal the odds", and wins not by his spells but with a sound whack under the knees, knocking the scion of House Pavus down on the grass.

Repeatedly.

Loki’s defensive shields work on reflex alone, and Dorian gets a controlled beating, tripping and unbalancing across his entire body, with barely a moment left to actually cast, except Loki is trained by the Ben-Hassrath, his control and focus hard as adamant, and he knows that when Dorian will check the damage, he will find his skin unbroken and only an occasional bruise on his arse.

It feels strangely satisfying, to win a duel with no offensive magic at all. Dorian just laughs as he's tripped again, and then demands a few lessons in Loki’s technique.

(He does laugh and smile a lot around Loki, doesn’t he?)

The sixth day, when Loki summons, bare-handed, a simple shield of ice on the paved backyard, the Alexius couple laughing with academic delight, is the day he sees _envy_ in the grey eyes of the talented, wealthy, handsome son of a powerful Tevinter magister, and something ugly unclenches in Loki's chest. 

It may as well be acknowledged as Loki's first step towards a sort of complicated truce with the Qun once more.

 

*

The young Tevinter is intrigued by the escaped  _saarebas_ , and he has questions, and then more questions, and Loki tries to answer them as well as he can. He doesn't want to tell them everything. It's his knowledge, his talents, his time invested in learning all this. It's his edge, and he's not eager to share it. But Dorian gives as much as he takes. Loki has never had such intense discussions about the nature of magic, about the components of the various advanced healing potions they insist he continue taking — against nerve damage and memory loss, and even some skin salve that Loki doesn't think is helping with the old scars on his back and forearms, but the unexplained bruises he supposedly had on his neck upon his arrival have healed without a trace.

(And he's made sure to ask about  _all_  the components and their possible side-effects, even crosschecking the information between Dorian and Livia, the main potions master of the house.)

It feels too good to be true, too good to last for long; and as he sits one evening with Alexius and Dorian, sipping perfect, rich wine from the best vineyards of Qarinus (compliments of Dorian's father), seven days after waking up in the strange bedroom — and seven days longer spent in the house than he'd initially planned ("You  _absolutely_ must finish this course of potions," Livia insists, and the woman is not to be argued with), Loki feels it, a small worm of a thought that is not his own. 

He feels his hackles rising, and he slams down on that shadowy thought mercilessly. Do the Ben-Hassrath still think they can control _him_?

He will not be controlled.

But this is not entirely his own thought either. It sounds suspiciously like his old friend Pride, the helpful provider of forbidden knowledge that always comes with a price.

Over the brim of the glimmering crystal glass, Loki's eyes travel to Dorian, and he finds the mage watching him.

His grey eyes glint dark in the firelight as he raises his own glass.

Unthinking, Loki toasts him, and the strange thoughts recede. Something else shifts in the air, something earthy and quick and possibly dangerous, like the glimpse of a snake disappearing in the grass.

He doesn't know what it means yet, but he knows he won't let the fear set in.

 


End file.
